June 8, 2022 • 49 mins
Cops and prosecutors try for another conviction against the cult of Ervil LeBaron. Difficulties arise when their key witness suddenly dies but events finally swing round in their favor when Ervil is arrested and, finally, locked behind bars. Jesse Hyde hears how in 1979 the spell seemed finally to have been broken. But if the law thought Ervil’s reign was over they were about to be disappointed.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. A listener notes this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing. Previously, on Deliver Us
from Hervial, Hervill thought that he could just move in
(00:29):
and take leadership. Well, it didn't work. That's the problem.
They thought they were going to go out and save
the world. Herbal was their leader. There's really gonna be
no stopping him. Anyone who opposed him deserved to die,
including a daughter. So I called my mother and she said, honey,
(00:52):
your daddy's been shot. He said from the beginning, the
only way you're going to get Herville is to break
someone substantial in his group. The FBI today arrested a
key suspect in the nineteen seventy seven religious assassination of
Polygamus patriarch Ruling all Read. Agents arrested twenty year old
(01:14):
Greenish and Off at the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas.
Even though we didn't have solid eyewitness testimony that she
was doing the pole the trigger, I was pretty confident
that we had sufficient evidence to convict. Judge raise the verdict,
not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Back in
(01:40):
seventy six, the leader of the Church of the Lamb
of God sent a letter to Jimmy Carter, A battle
is raging, he would write, a battle of the most important,
decisive nature the world has ever known. The Geneva Peace
Convention and the British Parliament would get similar letters from
herbal two. As God's prophet on earth, he wanted, well
(02:03):
actually demanded, world domination. Ervil had always aimed high, absurdly
delusionally high, but by this point in Irvil's mind, there
was plenty of evidence to back up his delusions his
belief that God was on his side, because even a
few years after that letter to the President, there still
(02:27):
hadn't been a single conviction in the United States against
any of rvil A Baron's active cult members for their
murderous activities. But despite this, in Salt Lake City, the
cops like Detective Dick Forbes and prosecutors like David Yoakum,
they weren't going to just give up and stop. After all,
(02:48):
Ervil seemed to actually believe he spoke for God and
God wanted him to commit these killings. But many of
the people hunting rvil A Baron saw this as a
holy crusade too. Most belonged to the Mormon church or
had been raised in it. They were trying to clean
up their own house. This applied to del van Ada,
(03:12):
the investigative reporter falling Herbal's trail. You heard an episode
four and Dick Forbes too. The Salt Lake City detective
Dell was swapping information with Plus From the mid seventies.
There was a certain prosecutor in California who also had
the colt in his crosshairs. It was it was I
(03:39):
knew we're in the right spot when I saw the
format come back. This is Gary Rumble. For decades he
worked as a prosecutor in San Diego. Mormon, like me,
went to b y U, except got kicked out. Gary
isn't your typical Mormon. He's always been a little rough
around the edges. He comes from Stockton, California. Even today,
(04:03):
you tell someone you're from Stockton, people might assume you
know how to scrap. If you pulled up at a
stop sign, you look over at the other car and
there was another teenager there, and you looked at that
guy for more and about five seconds you were going
to be in a fight in the street before the
light changed. So Gary learned how to fight. I took
taekwon do. I went about three or four times a week.
(04:25):
But then I got hired as a marshal at my
twenty one birthday and started carrying a gun, and I
immediately dropped out of taekwon do because fists are fast,
but bullets are faster. Gary's being slightly tongue in cheek
here but only slightly in person, he manages to be
simultaneously both warm and humorous and yet unflinching antagonistic, and
(04:49):
these pugilistic parts of his personality well, he carried that
into his job at the San Diego County District Attorney's Office.
Here for nearly forty years, Gary fought cases in court,
sometimes quite literally. We would go to war and in
the courtroom like we were going to a sporting event
(05:10):
every day. I've tried crips, I've tried the Hell's angels,
I've tried all kinds of murderers, and I just have
a good time. I kind of treat it like a sport.
My style was to be extremely aggressive, almost physically aggressive
in court, but I always smile at the crook. And
what makes these stories all the more amusing to me
(05:31):
is the fact that Gary's not a big guy. He
might be my size ten, thin frame. But as well
as that take kwon do, he was a wrestler in college.
He has that wily style of fighting and he'd use
that in the courtroom too well. Coming from a tough town,
I knew I couldn't out mad dog the crooks, and
(05:52):
I genuinely disliked the violet crooks. So what I did
was I smiled at him, and when I was given
my closing statement, if it was a violent crook, I
love that if I could get him to attack me.
I'd been to attack three times in the courtroom in
front of the jury, and it's just it's wonderful because
the jury gets to see what these people are like
on the streets. It wasn't just gang members. Gary used
(06:15):
this tactic for the cold blooded killers too, and I
had one murderer that had just about cut a guide
of pieces and was throwing parts of him around the room.
It was a horrific case. It attacked me incidentally during
the trial, and he refused to come in for sentencing because,
as he told the judge, I don't want to come
(06:36):
in there because you're gonna sentence me to life. And
Mr Rymple's gonna smile at me, and I don't want
to see him smile. The Labaron case, though, this was different.
These weren't crips or contract killers. These were religious zealots
from a branch of Gary's own faith, and what they
wanted was beyond reason. Unlike anything Gary had encountered. These
(07:02):
guys wanted to dominate the world. You see this thing
about this particular cult that stands out. These people are
extremely clean cut. You can see a dirtbag dope dealer
coming at you down the street. These guys could walk
up next to you in the supermarket pushing the cart,
(07:23):
more clean cut than I've ever been, shoot me twice
behind the ear, walk outside, get arrested, asking if they've
ever done anything wrong, and they say no, They passed
a polograph. The murder Gary was trying to prosecute was
a Dean vest that giant of a man who left
(07:45):
the army after strangling his sergeant, then did a stint
in prison and joined Merville's colt. It was Geary's job
to try and get a conviction against one of herbal
Le Baron's assassin wives, Vonda White. She was somewhat nondescript,
humble looking, straight hair, sort of an older waif, thin,
(08:07):
hollow cheeked, blinking eyes, non threatening looking. In other words,
when Gary Remple would eventually face Vonda in court, she
wasn't going to try to mad dog anyone. And for Gary,
the stakes could not have been higher. So far, every
(08:30):
prosecutor who had taken a cult member to trial had
gone in confident with eyewitnesses, fingerprints, and other circumstantial evidence.
And yet somehow every time Hervil's posse had been acquitted.
And so the prosecutors and cops trying to take this
(08:50):
murderous cult down really needed this one to stick. They
needed to stop the killings. With one conviction. They were
sure the dominoes would start to fall and they could
finally bring down Herville. But in their way were fugitive suspects,
(09:12):
watertight alibis, plus the fact that one of their previous
star witnesses from inside the Colt was about to die.
From the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this
is deliver Us from Herville. I'm Jesse Hyde. This is
(09:36):
episode seven, Herville Comes Home. Throughout this series, I've tried
to draw a clear line between mainstream Mormonism and it's
(09:59):
fun to mentalist branches. Partly for accuracy, mainstream Mormons haven't
practiced polygamy in over one years, and the faith is
trust me, anything but violent, and partly because I don't
want to lump people I love in with a group
like herbal abeyance. Many of my friends and family are
(10:19):
still devout believers. That said, it also wouldn't be fair
or accurate to not trace the roots of some of
these beliefs to their source. For many Mormons, these are
uncomfortable truths things maybe they don't want to look at.
(10:40):
One of the most controversial doctrines and Mormonism, for example,
is called blood atonement. Mainstream Mormons rarely utter these words.
If you do, things can get weird because blood atonement
is the belief that some sins are so awful you
can't be forgiven and less sure blood is spilt. Without
(11:02):
blood atonement, you become a son of perdition, gets sent
to Hell, that unique kind of Mormon held known as
outer darkness. Your blood is spilt to save you from
that terrifying fate. Nowadays, not many mainstream Mormons have even
heard of blood atonement. I never had growing up, or
(11:26):
in fact, until I first started studying Mormon fundamentalism. And
the doctrine is disputed, but some fundamentalists do believe it.
And that is what happened to the giant Dean Vest.
(11:48):
Saturday in June was yet another sunny and cloudless day
in National City, a working class suburbs south of San Diego,
not too far from the border with Mexico. This is
where dean Vest lived with a few of Hervil's followers.
It was common for cult members to share houses like
(12:08):
this together. Unremarkable on the outside, here they could live
inconspicuously with a bunch of their kids. Herville periodically visiting.
Dean Vest shared this house with a few of Herbal's wives,
a woman called Lynda Johnson and her kids, and Vonda
White and her kids too. And this Saturday, Vonda had
(12:31):
told Vest she was going to cook him a special meal.
When Vest arrived at their home that day, Vonda told
him the mill was ready. She told him to wash up.
She was dressed in pants top in a apron as
he bent over the sink to wash up, because he
had to do some serious bending, because this guy was
(12:53):
seven ft tall in his stockings. As he bent over,
she sneaked up behind him and gave him one in
the back, which pierced his lungs. When prosecutor Gary Remple
first started on the case, he used the evidence at
the crime scene to try to build a narrative. He
spun around, spewing blood from his mouth in a circle, staggered,
(13:19):
and collapsed on the floor. Were upon according to protocol,
she gave him one behind the ear. By this time,
Herville's colt had killed so many people they'd established a
methodology one behind the ear just to make sure they
were dead. As the shots were fired. Across the street
(13:41):
was an off duty police officer who won the launder
mat there. He was there emptying the boxes, collecting some money.
Here's a couple of shots. Looks immediately in the direction
from which they came. He was able to scan both
the front door and the back area of the house
and saw that nobody ever left. This was great for
us because that puts Vonda the only person in the house.
(14:07):
Shortly after arriving on the scene, the cops had suspected
Vonda might have been responsible, and so they brought her
in for questioning. June nine, the time of seventeen forty hours.
Interviewing officer is Detective E. T. Dece National City Police Department,
and her name please? And where you strict? All right,
(14:34):
Mrs why, I'm going to read you your rights now
as guaranteed in the Constitution. I wish you would listen
to the rights as I reading. Listening into this police
interrogation with Vonda, you kind of get a sense of
what Gary Rample was up against well, accused of this
although there was no evidence supporting this. The way she
(14:56):
could lie so convincingly to police so on dramatically, honestly,
it's pretty impressive. First of all, about the Colts previous murders,
which she blamed on Joel and Verlin. LeBaron's church said,
it was all the actions of the followers of the
Chill fundamentalists back in colonial LeBaron and members of their
(15:19):
church have gone directly to our people and have threatened
them with violence. And then when it came to the
Deanvest murder itself, referring to the occurrences of this plate,
can you tell me what happened in your own words
leading up to the time which police officers arrived. Yes,
(15:39):
I was at stairs with my children, and I've heard
his succession of shots. Okay, when you say subcession, is
that more than one? Can you give me an exact
count of shots? No, I know I heard more than mine.
That I was writing them them. Okay, where were you at?
I was in the upstairs band I okay? And we
(16:04):
were the children, all right. I had my little one
with me and the other children or in bedroom reading.
Because everything you told me regarding the sense of participation,
and since it had been a truth point, yes, even
if the cops did feel she was lying, what came
(16:25):
out during this interrogation was troubling. Vonda had an alibi
when the police arrived. She said she'd been upstairs reading
a naptime story and talking on the phone to Lynda
Johnson when she hears some shots that Lynda Johnson would
have heard too, because Lynda Johnson was her alibi, and
she came downstairs and found the horrible scene. Linda Johnson,
(16:48):
another of Rvil's wives. Lynda Johnson, was a very nice,
stout woman who just did whatever Hervil asked and she
was ill treated by him and uh just used as
a servant. Basically, this servant was an expert forger able
(17:09):
to give members of the cult multiple identities, and because
the cult was operating in a period before electronic records
across multiple state and national boundaries. Her skills caused all
sorts of problems for law enforcement. But Linda and her
alibi weren't the only issue cops faced when it came
(17:30):
to solving the Dean Vest murder. There weren't any clean
prints on the murder weapon, for one. Also, they couldn't
figure out the motive just what had happened between Vanda
and the huge Dean Vest. You can hear that here
in their initial questioning with Vonda trying to work out
the motive. They were both known members of Hervil's cult.
(17:54):
Why would she kill Dean? Have you recently ran the past?
And any disagree with Mr h The police have blanked
out Dean's name in the recordings here as anyone living
in the house at a discool Mr we random charms.
Gary stuck with it. I was able to defuse the alibi. First,
(18:20):
he dug into Linda's background, found some welfare fraud and
used the threat of charges against Linda Johnson to spook
her into cooperating if she had testified in the trial.
I could have easily impeached her, and so she chose
to stay in Denver and I never saw her again.
Vonda's alibi was gone, but Vonda was still in the wind,
(18:41):
and Gary still didn't have a motive. The years passed
see and into February of seventy eight, but then Lloyd
Sullivan was arrested. Flipped the former Herville foot soldier now
with his axe to grind against Hervil. And once he
(19:03):
started giving information to the cops, he didn't just right
out Herville for the killing of Ruben Alred. I'm going
to show you a photograph. I recognize this photo. I
recognize this as a lady who calls herself Vonda White,
gene Wal a number of other aliases. Yes, I do
(19:26):
recognize that this is Lloyd Sullivan from that interview with
cops on March where he's about to lay out for them.
Just why Vonda White shot Deean vest and herbal mmle
Baron told me he had turned trader to the Kingdom
of God. Excuse man must die, He must die because
(19:50):
he was a trader of the Kingdom in what period
of time with this must have been in the early
part of and the next thing. I know Bonda White,
he had had a commandment from herbal the killing. So
sometime later, I suppose you wanted to get it up
her chest. I don't know if she trusted Nick quite
(20:10):
well and indicated several times she thought quite well of me,
And it seemed like we were standing in the kitchen,
and I can recall and vividly standing there and she
told me that she did indeed kill. That broke the
case wide open. Prosecutor Gary Remple couldn't believe his luck.
(20:35):
Sullivan told the story how Vonda White had killed Dean
vest She had intercepted a phone call or happened to
pick up an extension where he was arranging to meet
with the FBI in Seattle, where his wife had moved.
He was defecting to the FBI, and he was going
to bring along a trunk full of automatic weapons, sniper rifles,
(20:58):
and explosives. What's more, Lloyd agreed to say all this
in court to take the stand. So Lloyd was instrumental
in Lloyd Lloyd was my principal witness. Then more good news.
In March seventy eight, not long after Lloyd's testimony, there
was another break in the case. Vonda was apprehended, but
(21:21):
it seems the good news couldn't last, and as the
case moved to trial, Lloyd got spooked. By now he
was effectively living in a witness protection program. He genuinely
feared for his life, and then he had his location
revealed by local newspaper in the Utah town where he
was hiding out. He was under an assumed name in
(21:43):
a small town in the suburb area of Salt Lake City.
They even published a picture of him, and Lloyd knew
better than anyone just how dangerous this was. After all,
he'd helped plan many of the cults killings. He was
getting extremely paranoid. He was sure he'd be recognized in
(22:04):
that town and killed. Also, he had a drinking problem,
I should tell you that, so he wasn't in the
best of health. A drunk paranoid not exactly a good
mix for a man in hiding, and Lloyd was becoming
increasingly convinced that some of Hervill's killers were around each
corner waiting for him. He needed a new identity, something
(22:27):
to help him avoid detection. In May of seventy eight,
he called his handlers in the police and told them
begged them to help. So he's in a phone booth
prior to cell phones, calling the Salt Lake Police Department
where his connections were, And as that occurred, a car
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drove by and backfired, mistaking it for a shot. He
died of a heart attack. Gary Remple's star witness, was
head killed, not by Herville, but by a backfiring car.
And that wasn't the only bump in the road that's
(23:09):
coming up after the break. It was the summer of
(23:43):
and the heat was on for Gary Remple, that prosecutor
who liked to stare down gang members and killers. As
the trial of Vonda White got underway, even he felt
an unnerving tension in the air, not just the usual
pressure on the cops and prosecutors for a conviction or
even a conviction against the coult With Herville still at large,
(24:07):
there was a real risk to life to everyone involved
in these court cases. Rvill Le Baron had taken his
belief in what he called the law of force and
morphed it into this blood atonement, a theology which wasn't
simply based on vengeance, but rather that a killing could
(24:28):
be a form of compassion. For her defense in court,
Erville's group had pulled their tithing and hired Vonda an
expensive team of private defense attorneys. We'd have these arguments
and they'd be a sidebar. They'd get quite animated. And
(24:48):
during one of these arguments, halfway through the case, things
were getting pretty heavy and suddenly the lights went out
in the courtroom. At least one or two jur screamed.
I had grabbed one of the guys that was slouching
and put him in front of me with my back
to the wall the courtroom. I had my back to
(25:10):
the wall, a defense attorney in front of me, and
I was pulling out my derringer. When the lights came
back on one of these guys slouching against the wall
had inadvertently turned off the lights. Gary's eyes light up
telling me this tale. He has this mischievous panache when
he's telling all his best stories. But the fact that
(25:32):
he grabbed someone else for cover, I think that shows
just how scared everyone actually was. A Hervill's colt at
this point in the late seventies of their reach, would
they really hit a courtroom mid trial? Gary clearly thought
they might. And if Gary had sensed he had reason
to fear for his own life and just trying to
(25:54):
prosecute this cult. He was right. The Colt had put
a hit out on Arry. In fact, during his investigation
into Rvil, a baron, the man himself had sent three
of his most efficient assassins, his right hand man, Dan
Jordan's Marchin and Eddie Marston, to Gary's home to kill him.
(26:17):
About eleven o'clock one night, I was awakened by a
phone call from the San Diego Police Department that the
FBI had just contacted them. FBI told him they'd wire
tap Rville, and the word came out. Rvill had ordered
three guys to come up and kill me, to drive
up from en Sonata to my house and kill me.
(26:37):
They had my address en sonatas about two hours from
where I lived. There. In the time it took the
FBI to get this information from their wire tap relay
it to the cops who related it to Gary, precious
time had been lost. Rvil's hit team had a two
hour drive to their target. So all I had was
(27:00):
a snub nose thirty eight and I was on a
cul de sac, and I didn't know if they were
coming up the cul de sac, so like I couldn't
leave the area. So I ran across the street to
the neighbor and I borrowed his German shepherd, big Dog,
and uh, I brought him to guard the front door. Well,
that German shepherd started whining. He could sense my attention.
I was high amps and he started whining and crying
(27:23):
by the front door, and I thought, it's gonna be
a liability if he defecates on the floor while I'm
trying to shoot it out with these guys. So I
took him back to the neighbor and I stood there
for my thirty eight opened that the cops got there
before the crooks, and uh, sure enough the cops made it.
Then there's a bunch of cars. The hit team assigned
to Gary must have seen those lights and aborted the mission.
(27:47):
Then along about then a couple of day investigators showed up.
And the byproducts of this whole episode was I had
to move out of my house. I lived under a
phony name in a hotel for a while until all
this was over. Trying a member of hervill Abaron's colt
had nearly cost Gary his life, and then another setback.
(28:09):
In July of seventy eight, the judge in the case
suddenly declared a mistrial. He didn't like my style because
it conflicted with his style, is what I think. We
were kind of going back and forth in time, and
I'm having a good old day in court as far
as I was concerned, and so we had a little argument,
and his cure for my misbehavior was to declare a mistrial.
(28:30):
But maybe set back is the wrong word, because Gary,
that kid from Stockton, was ready for another round. Gary
got some more insider information on the Colt. It turns
out round one with Gary and Court his punches had
done some damage. After that mistrial, I went out to
a restaurant for lunch with the three defense attorneys and
(28:55):
they admitted to me they're running through the cult's money.
You know. The side effect of this whole case was
that I broke the bank. Gary smelled blood in the water.
When the second trial came, I was really pumped up
because I knew they were suffering and I was only
going to get stronger. I wasn't gonna get weaker. On
(29:18):
the first of May nine, just a few months after
the acquittal of Riena Chinath, the second trial against Vonda
White began and the court we're using similar tactics from
those that had freed Rena and her accomplices. They blame
the killing on one of the witnesses for the prosecution,
Don Sullivan, Gary had seen that move coming a mile away.
(29:43):
I found out that at the time Dean Vest was
murdered by Vonda White, Don Sullivan was in another state
standing at the window of a teller making a bank deposit.
I got that teller, and when I put him on
the stand, they were done for. He had the receipt
(30:05):
and there was a signature that we matched the handwriting
on of down, proving irrevocably through an independent witness that
he was standing at the teller's window, and the teller
besides remembered him. The case was basically over at that point.
Shortly thereafter went the jury after just two hours of deliberation.
(30:29):
Just two hours, that's all it took. After all these
years of unaccounted for slayings by Herbal's colts, Herville promised
these people that if they took these callings, they could
never be convicted of a crime because they hadn't really
committed a crime in their hearts. And more importantly, it
(30:52):
showed that they could be convicted of murder, and they
couldn't get away with it. For the first time, one
of Hervil's assassin's had been convicted, and it was like
a spell had been broken. Vanda sentencing would take place
in mid June of seventy nine, and by then another
arrest would have taken place, this time over the border
(31:14):
in Mexico. Prosecutor David Yoakum, who had failed to get
a conviction against Rena and the other cult members, was
about to get another shot, this time at Erville himself.
He had grown pretty free up till that time, even
as a fugitive from a murder case in Utah, probably
(31:34):
bought his way out of every problem he had down there.
But Erville's time living as a fugitive in Mexico was
about to be up. He had caused some problems down
there and members of his group and assaulted Mexican nationals.
Mexican law enforcement received a tip about Rvil's exact whereabouts.
(31:55):
They just got fed up with him and notified the
US authorities that he had been apprehended and was on
his way. In the past, he had managed to get
out of prison and walk away, but this time he'd
been driven straight to the border, met the federal authorities
there and our investigators, and that tip the Mexican cops
(32:17):
received about Hervil's exact whereabouts. It had come from Larive Stubbs,
still tracking Herbal's whereabouts all these years later from down
in Colonial LeBaron. We hadn't figured out to take him
right to the border handcuffed, and they did. The guys
took off their foot cuffs and their handcuffs and told
(32:39):
them to get out and walk, and he did, and
they said, and if you try to run, we'll shoot
your feet. They stood right there and they walked across
the border, and we had like thirty officials they're waiting
for him. Herville LeBaron had been arrested. That's coming up
after the break m. The city of Laredo sits on
(33:16):
the northern bank of the Rio Grand one ft in
Texas one in the Mexican state of tom Alippus on
the southern bank of the river. This is where Rena
was handed over to U S authorities, and now the
same fate met Hervill le Baron. But when Herville crossed
(33:36):
over into the arms of US law enforcement in June
of the image had to be a letdown to all
those who had been reading about this so called Mormon manson.
The guy didn't look scary or impressive. Even his lawyer
was a little taken aback when he saw him the
(33:58):
first images of grand fatherly figure sitting in a jail jumpsuit.
Public defender Bruce Lubeck was one of three lawyers assigned
to Herville to try and make his case in the
upcoming trial. My first impression was, they've got the wrong
guy here. This isn't Irva LeBaron, the evil looking, dynamic
(34:19):
figure that controls young people and multiple wives and has
killed people. This is a kindly looking, gentle, meek looking
old man who looks beaten down and tired, and didn't
seem to be dynamic. He seemed very low key, And
I said, you know how, I don't know how he
could get anybody to do anything, you know what I mean,
(34:42):
Why would anyone follow him? Irvill was charged with first
degree murder for Dr Rulin already and first degree conspiracy
to murder Virlin LeBaron for that botched assassination attempt. The
group had planned for Dr Alred's funeral. The lawyers hoped
Irvill would give them something they could use as a
compelling defense. It seemed Hervil felt this was something they
(35:05):
didn't need to worry about. It was in God's hands,
and God had always protected him. He felt that somehow
his truth was going to prevail and that I I
was one who was going to help that come about.
And I said to myself, I'm a lowly public defender
in a small city in Utah, and I doubt that
(35:26):
I'm a world changer. I knew I wasn't. And I
told him that, and he said, oh no, no, don't
sell yourself short. There's miracles going to come out of this.
And he believed it. But as Hervil laid out his
beliefs and justifications to his lawyers, it was hard for
them to keep up. We'd go into a small room
of metal walls, no windows, metal door that they locked
(35:50):
from the outside, and they'd say knock when you're done.
Then he would start on his preaching, often in one
way or another. And I regret to say this and
it but it's in retrospect, it was part of it.
I can remember I've got my legal pad there and
I'm holding my pen and taking notes, you know, and
he's talking and and I would drop my pencil and
(36:13):
it would wake me up, and I just kind of
fell asleep a couple times. He never said, oh am
I boring you? Sorry. He was always very kinous. Oh yeah,
it's a hard time of day to stay awake, isn't
it can be? You know he was. He never got
upset at that, but I know I fell asleep. Mhm.
(36:40):
The trial of Herbal a Baron began on Wednesday, May
the fourteenth. A new decade had arrived in the hunt
against Herville and his colt, with the optimism that the
saga was approaching its end. On that Wednesday, Prosecutor David
Yoakum stood across the courtroom from Herville in the dot
(37:01):
He looked very um pale. I would say he looked weak.
He said quietly, and behaved himself. He was never a problem.
He never got out of hand, but a lot of
the witnesses said that he tried to stare him down,
and a lot of the witnesses felt his spirit or
(37:24):
his feelings or emotions felt really they were being threatened
or indirectly through him in the courtroom. After previous failures,
Yoakum wasn't taking any chances this time. He brought in
the big guns to testify. I testified against him in
his trial, which was tough. Larie Stubbs, who had known
(37:46):
Herville since the early days of colonial LeBaron, was anxious
for her chance to face herbal down. I've never done
anything like that in my life, and I was really upset.
They had to work with me for three and a
half days to get me to have the confidence to
go in there and just say only what I needed
(38:08):
to say. I don't have any qualms, but it was
a day good testimony. Herville was going to make the
fundamentalists the Alreads pay their tithing and if they didn't,
he would just have to start getting rid of him.
And that's the statement I made, and I of course
said it exactly proper in court. And when I left,
(38:30):
I was shaken beyond because they're all sitting right there
trying to eye me down, because he told his lawyers,
if I can make eye contact with her, I can
break her down. So my lawyers warned me not to
look at him, not once, because he sat like closer
than that chair, and I'm sitting right here. I think
(38:53):
that he did believe if I can make eye contact,
I can mix her up, like mesmerize you because he
did do that to lot of people and he didn't
know how. But I wasn't one of them. I wasn't
scared of that. I wasn't scared of Hervill because I
knew how to dodge him. I had already proved hundred times.
He was probably more scared of me than I was
(39:13):
at him in the end. Next up on the stand
for the prosecution was Erville's teenage son, Isaac, the one
who had been at the April seventy seven meeting when
Herville ordered the ruling already killing. He was the most
emotional and I think most believable witness The prosecution had
(39:34):
certainly much believable in the defense witnesses. They're all allied
through their teeth. But Isaac had to come forward reluctantly
because he had been threatened all of his life. In
a short time he had lived that he was never
to talk to the police, never to give information about it,
the group, or his father or anyone else. So it
(39:58):
was very hard for him, as young man too to
come forward and speak on behalf of the prosecution at trial.
So when he got on the stand, there was a
lot of tension in the courtroom. Prosecutor David Yoachum asked
what did Isaac think would happen to him if the
Colt caught up with him after this court appearance. He
(40:21):
basically said, if he should ever be caught by a
member of the group or he faced them directly, that
he had probably killed. So he was always under the
impression that he had the death penalty assessed against him,
and when he testified to that, it was to me
very believable. Rvil had his witnesses too, people like Rville's
(40:41):
right hand man, Dan Jordan's, filed into the courtroom as
family and cult members called out the prosecution witnesses as liars.
It was they who were the violent ones, as defectors
from his church. Rville was a peace loving preacher being framed,
they said, and end the defense and prosecution rested their case.
(41:05):
It seems kind of strange, given how long the build
up to this day had been, that the trial lasted
just fourteen days. Which side of the Colt would jury
members believe like Plato's cave. Was it going to be
the ones who remained in the cave or those whose
eyes had gotten used to the light outside of Herb's colts.
(41:27):
The answer didn't take long. Just three hours later, the
jury returned to court with a verdict. Hervill's lawyer, Bruce Lubeck,
looked on the jury files back in and the judge says,
I understand the jury has arrived at a verdict. The
fourth person sents and and says, yes, that's true, and
he says, handed to the bailiff. The bailiff takes the form,
(41:50):
hands it to the judge. The judge lex over it
and so he knows before anybody, and then hands it
to the his clerk and says, the clerk will read
the verdict. Has the defendants stand and we stand with him?
And then the clear Creets says, the State of Utah
versserve labart in case number one two three, As to
count one, we the jury, Dooley and paneled an above
(42:12):
entitle matter find the defendant Hervil LeBaron guilty of conspiracy
to commit murder of first degree felony. And then the
judge says to the jury, so say you one and all.
Irville had been found guilty of conspiring to kill Virlin
LeBaron and guilty of first degree murder for the death
of Dr Alred Well. Of course, there was a lot
(42:35):
of weeping and part of his that followed him. Cult
members in court were outraged. This was not in God's plan.
This judge said, no, no, I'll have no outburs and
he would bang his gavel. Nobody bangs the gavel anymore,
but he did all the time. He wore it out.
But how no outburst or I'll clear the courtroom. And
he was very aggressive. Judge Herville remained strangely calm. Even
(43:02):
Rvill's lawyer was surprised by his reaction. There's certainly no
outburst from him, nothing from him. And he said, okay, now,
well now we'll get to work on this and we'll
get this straightened out. So thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate
everything you've done for me. Why wasn't Rvil more upset
at a verdict that would likely mean he would spend
(43:23):
the rest of his life behind bars. Surely this was
the end for him, for his cult, for the Church
of the Lamb of God. Clearly Irvil didn't think so.
I did then and even more fully now believe he
believed he simply had a role to play. There's this sculpture.
(43:46):
This is that there should be one mighty and strong
and regardless of what he faced in this life, and
he believed it. I believe he believed it, and the
rest of us were just playing in air, and he
had the word of God and no one else did.
Hervill was eventually transferred to a Utah prison, but there
this attitude of acceptance, just biding his time remained. I
(44:09):
went to see him in the prison that more as
a hand holding effort. Uh. He was never what I
considered depressed or suicidal, or there was optimism. Somehow things
would prevail, right would prevail, his view of things would triumph,
and uh he would come off the victor somehow. Even
at that my last meetings, he was he was going
(44:30):
to prevail. Hervill started preaching to fellow inmates, trying to
recruit them. But while he sat in prison, the members
of his cult on the outside, more of them had
started to leave the cave and see the fire burning outside,
just like in Plato's cave. They were coming to perceive
reality in the same way as those on the outside.
(44:53):
All started saying things in his doctrine and things and
he had done, and things he had said that just
you know, we just couldn't ignore them anymore. This is
Rena Channath during her interview with the writer Dean Shapiro
for her book years later. He was doing things that
weren't since that that made no sense. He was saying
(45:14):
things that didn't make any sense. Free from Herville's grasp
from the late seventies, Rena had started to build a
life away from the cult. Was this the last time
you saw him? I didn't going to see him. I
didn't see him. I hadn't seen since Mexico, So you
never did see him again? I just I couldn't. Rena
wasn't the only one who was splitting away from the
(45:36):
cult at this point. Lots of other members were moving
on to some like her brother's Mark, Dwayne, and Victor
were trying and succeeding to build lives outside the cult.
For Herville, these defections were the worst kind of betrayal,
and from his cell he directed his rage at them.
(45:59):
Into the pen. He had nothing but time to write,
and from his early days in colonial le Baron, he
could go days writing, sometimes without sleep. Prison officers peered
into a cell, wondering what was he writing in there?
Locked away, his followers leaving him, It didn't seem to matter.
(46:22):
The insignificant ramblings of a madman. Then one day in August,
they peered into his cell and saw something else, Herville
dead on the floor. Detective speculating about the precise cause
(46:44):
of death would tell the press. Maybe he took an
overdose of drugs, his throat was damaged, maybe he suffocated
after striking himself in the neck. But the Utah Medical
Examiner's office concluded it was a heart attack. And it
almost seemed like no one really cared about the actual cause.
(47:05):
The important thing was it was finally over. Rvil A Baron,
the cult, the misery, the crime, the murders. It was finished.
At least that's what it seemed to the people of
colonial le Baron, to the mainstream Mormon Church, scandalized and
(47:28):
embarrassed by this rogue, bastard child souling their good name
to the former cult members. Finally, blessedly it was all over.
But it wasn't. In some ways, Irville's death was just
the beginning of something far more monstrous, organized, and ruthless
(47:53):
than anything that had come before. I was nine years old.
I had made a vow that I would give my
life just by being in the cold, just by being
born into it, and when a person had to die,
it was so that that person could be saved, so
we didn't see it as an evil that's coming up
(48:17):
in episode eight of deliver Us from Herville. Deliver Us
from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written
and reported by me Leona Hamid and David Waters. Production
(48:41):
from Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and Max
O'Brien are executive producers. Lena Chang and Megan Oyinka are researchers.
Marianna Gongora is our field producer. Fact checking by Donya
Suleman and Sona Avakian. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie
(49:01):
Taylor and Charlotte Wolfe. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor.
Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production. Gavin Haynes
is our head of Development. Willard Foxton is our creative
director of Development. Mix scoring and sound designed by Eli Block.
Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music
(49:26):
is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson,
Scott Carrier, del van Ada, Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards Matt O'Mara,
Katrina Norville and beth Ann Macaluso, Oran Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman,
and all the team at U t A. For more
from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
Novel. A listener notes this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing. Previously, on Deliver Us
from Hervial, Hervill thought that he could just move in
(00:29):
and take leadership. Well, it didn't work. That's the problem.
They thought they were going to go out and save
the world. Herbal was their leader. There's really gonna be
no stopping him. Anyone who opposed him deserved to die,
including a daughter. So I called my mother and she said, honey,
(00:52):
your daddy's been shot. He said from the beginning, the
only way you're going to get Herville is to break
someone substantial in his group. The FBI today arrested a
key suspect in the nineteen seventy seven religious assassination of
Polygamus patriarch Ruling all Read. Agents arrested twenty year old
(01:14):
Greenish and Off at the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas.
Even though we didn't have solid eyewitness testimony that she
was doing the pole the trigger, I was pretty confident
that we had sufficient evidence to convict. Judge raise the verdict,
not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Back in
(01:40):
seventy six, the leader of the Church of the Lamb
of God sent a letter to Jimmy Carter, A battle
is raging, he would write, a battle of the most important,
decisive nature the world has ever known. The Geneva Peace
Convention and the British Parliament would get similar letters from
herbal two. As God's prophet on earth, he wanted, well
(02:03):
actually demanded, world domination. Ervil had always aimed high, absurdly
delusionally high, but by this point in Irvil's mind, there
was plenty of evidence to back up his delusions his
belief that God was on his side, because even a
few years after that letter to the President, there still
(02:27):
hadn't been a single conviction in the United States against
any of rvil A Baron's active cult members for their
murderous activities. But despite this, in Salt Lake City, the
cops like Detective Dick Forbes and prosecutors like David Yoakum,
they weren't going to just give up and stop. After all,
(02:48):
Ervil seemed to actually believe he spoke for God and
God wanted him to commit these killings. But many of
the people hunting rvil A Baron saw this as a
holy crusade too. Most belonged to the Mormon church or
had been raised in it. They were trying to clean
up their own house. This applied to del van Ada,
(03:12):
the investigative reporter falling Herbal's trail. You heard an episode
four and Dick Forbes too. The Salt Lake City detective
Dell was swapping information with Plus From the mid seventies.
There was a certain prosecutor in California who also had
the colt in his crosshairs. It was it was I
(03:39):
knew we're in the right spot when I saw the
format come back. This is Gary Rumble. For decades he
worked as a prosecutor in San Diego. Mormon, like me,
went to b y U, except got kicked out. Gary
isn't your typical Mormon. He's always been a little rough
around the edges. He comes from Stockton, California. Even today,
(04:03):
you tell someone you're from Stockton, people might assume you
know how to scrap. If you pulled up at a
stop sign, you look over at the other car and
there was another teenager there, and you looked at that
guy for more and about five seconds you were going
to be in a fight in the street before the
light changed. So Gary learned how to fight. I took
taekwon do. I went about three or four times a week.
(04:25):
But then I got hired as a marshal at my
twenty one birthday and started carrying a gun, and I
immediately dropped out of taekwon do because fists are fast,
but bullets are faster. Gary's being slightly tongue in cheek
here but only slightly in person, he manages to be
simultaneously both warm and humorous and yet unflinching antagonistic, and
(04:49):
these pugilistic parts of his personality well, he carried that
into his job at the San Diego County District Attorney's Office.
Here for nearly forty years, Gary fought cases in court,
sometimes quite literally. We would go to war and in
the courtroom like we were going to a sporting event
(05:10):
every day. I've tried crips, I've tried the Hell's angels,
I've tried all kinds of murderers, and I just have
a good time. I kind of treat it like a sport.
My style was to be extremely aggressive, almost physically aggressive
in court, but I always smile at the crook. And
what makes these stories all the more amusing to me
(05:31):
is the fact that Gary's not a big guy. He
might be my size ten, thin frame. But as well
as that take kwon do, he was a wrestler in college.
He has that wily style of fighting and he'd use
that in the courtroom too well. Coming from a tough town,
I knew I couldn't out mad dog the crooks, and
(05:52):
I genuinely disliked the violet crooks. So what I did
was I smiled at him, and when I was given
my closing statement, if it was a violent crook, I
love that if I could get him to attack me.
I'd been to attack three times in the courtroom in
front of the jury, and it's just it's wonderful because
the jury gets to see what these people are like
on the streets. It wasn't just gang members. Gary used
(06:15):
this tactic for the cold blooded killers too, and I
had one murderer that had just about cut a guide
of pieces and was throwing parts of him around the room.
It was a horrific case. It attacked me incidentally during
the trial, and he refused to come in for sentencing because,
as he told the judge, I don't want to come
(06:36):
in there because you're gonna sentence me to life. And
Mr Rymple's gonna smile at me, and I don't want
to see him smile. The Labaron case, though, this was different.
These weren't crips or contract killers. These were religious zealots
from a branch of Gary's own faith, and what they
wanted was beyond reason. Unlike anything Gary had encountered. These
(07:02):
guys wanted to dominate the world. You see this thing
about this particular cult that stands out. These people are
extremely clean cut. You can see a dirtbag dope dealer
coming at you down the street. These guys could walk
up next to you in the supermarket pushing the cart,
(07:23):
more clean cut than I've ever been, shoot me twice
behind the ear, walk outside, get arrested, asking if they've
ever done anything wrong, and they say no, They passed
a polograph. The murder Gary was trying to prosecute was
a Dean vest that giant of a man who left
(07:45):
the army after strangling his sergeant, then did a stint
in prison and joined Merville's colt. It was Geary's job
to try and get a conviction against one of herbal
Le Baron's assassin wives, Vonda White. She was somewhat nondescript,
humble looking, straight hair, sort of an older waif, thin,
(08:07):
hollow cheeked, blinking eyes, non threatening looking. In other words,
when Gary Remple would eventually face Vonda in court, she
wasn't going to try to mad dog anyone. And for Gary,
the stakes could not have been higher. So far, every
(08:30):
prosecutor who had taken a cult member to trial had
gone in confident with eyewitnesses, fingerprints, and other circumstantial evidence.
And yet somehow every time Hervil's posse had been acquitted.
And so the prosecutors and cops trying to take this
(08:50):
murderous cult down really needed this one to stick. They
needed to stop the killings. With one conviction. They were
sure the dominoes would start to fall and they could
finally bring down Herville. But in their way were fugitive suspects,
(09:12):
watertight alibis, plus the fact that one of their previous
star witnesses from inside the Colt was about to die.
From the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this
is deliver Us from Herville. I'm Jesse Hyde. This is
(09:36):
episode seven, Herville Comes Home. Throughout this series, I've tried
to draw a clear line between mainstream Mormonism and it's
(09:59):
fun to mentalist branches. Partly for accuracy, mainstream Mormons haven't
practiced polygamy in over one years, and the faith is
trust me, anything but violent, and partly because I don't
want to lump people I love in with a group
like herbal abeyance. Many of my friends and family are
(10:19):
still devout believers. That said, it also wouldn't be fair
or accurate to not trace the roots of some of
these beliefs to their source. For many Mormons, these are
uncomfortable truths things maybe they don't want to look at.
(10:40):
One of the most controversial doctrines and Mormonism, for example,
is called blood atonement. Mainstream Mormons rarely utter these words.
If you do, things can get weird because blood atonement
is the belief that some sins are so awful you
can't be forgiven and less sure blood is spilt. Without
(11:02):
blood atonement, you become a son of perdition, gets sent
to Hell, that unique kind of Mormon held known as
outer darkness. Your blood is spilt to save you from
that terrifying fate. Nowadays, not many mainstream Mormons have even
heard of blood atonement. I never had growing up, or
(11:26):
in fact, until I first started studying Mormon fundamentalism. And
the doctrine is disputed, but some fundamentalists do believe it.
And that is what happened to the giant Dean Vest.
(11:48):
Saturday in June was yet another sunny and cloudless day
in National City, a working class suburbs south of San Diego,
not too far from the border with Mexico. This is
where dean Vest lived with a few of Hervil's followers.
It was common for cult members to share houses like
(12:08):
this together. Unremarkable on the outside, here they could live
inconspicuously with a bunch of their kids. Herville periodically visiting.
Dean Vest shared this house with a few of Herbal's wives,
a woman called Lynda Johnson and her kids, and Vonda
White and her kids too. And this Saturday, Vonda had
(12:31):
told Vest she was going to cook him a special meal.
When Vest arrived at their home that day, Vonda told
him the mill was ready. She told him to wash up.
She was dressed in pants top in a apron as
he bent over the sink to wash up, because he
had to do some serious bending, because this guy was
(12:53):
seven ft tall in his stockings. As he bent over,
she sneaked up behind him and gave him one in
the back, which pierced his lungs. When prosecutor Gary Remple
first started on the case, he used the evidence at
the crime scene to try to build a narrative. He
spun around, spewing blood from his mouth in a circle, staggered,
(13:19):
and collapsed on the floor. Were upon according to protocol,
she gave him one behind the ear. By this time,
Herville's colt had killed so many people they'd established a
methodology one behind the ear just to make sure they
were dead. As the shots were fired. Across the street
(13:41):
was an off duty police officer who won the launder
mat there. He was there emptying the boxes, collecting some money.
Here's a couple of shots. Looks immediately in the direction
from which they came. He was able to scan both
the front door and the back area of the house
and saw that nobody ever left. This was great for
us because that puts Vonda the only person in the house.
(14:07):
Shortly after arriving on the scene, the cops had suspected
Vonda might have been responsible, and so they brought her
in for questioning. June nine, the time of seventeen forty hours.
Interviewing officer is Detective E. T. Dece National City Police Department,
and her name please? And where you strict? All right,
(14:34):
Mrs why, I'm going to read you your rights now
as guaranteed in the Constitution. I wish you would listen
to the rights as I reading. Listening into this police
interrogation with Vonda, you kind of get a sense of
what Gary Rample was up against well, accused of this
although there was no evidence supporting this. The way she
(14:56):
could lie so convincingly to police so on dramatically, honestly,
it's pretty impressive. First of all, about the Colts previous murders,
which she blamed on Joel and Verlin. LeBaron's church said,
it was all the actions of the followers of the
Chill fundamentalists back in colonial LeBaron and members of their
(15:19):
church have gone directly to our people and have threatened
them with violence. And then when it came to the
Deanvest murder itself, referring to the occurrences of this plate,
can you tell me what happened in your own words
leading up to the time which police officers arrived. Yes,
(15:39):
I was at stairs with my children, and I've heard
his succession of shots. Okay, when you say subcession, is
that more than one? Can you give me an exact
count of shots? No, I know I heard more than mine.
That I was writing them them. Okay, where were you at?
I was in the upstairs band I okay? And we
(16:04):
were the children, all right. I had my little one
with me and the other children or in bedroom reading.
Because everything you told me regarding the sense of participation,
and since it had been a truth point, yes, even
if the cops did feel she was lying, what came
(16:25):
out during this interrogation was troubling. Vonda had an alibi
when the police arrived. She said she'd been upstairs reading
a naptime story and talking on the phone to Lynda
Johnson when she hears some shots that Lynda Johnson would
have heard too, because Lynda Johnson was her alibi, and
she came downstairs and found the horrible scene. Linda Johnson,
(16:48):
another of Rvil's wives. Lynda Johnson, was a very nice,
stout woman who just did whatever Hervil asked and she
was ill treated by him and uh just used as
a servant. Basically, this servant was an expert forger able
(17:09):
to give members of the cult multiple identities, and because
the cult was operating in a period before electronic records
across multiple state and national boundaries. Her skills caused all
sorts of problems for law enforcement. But Linda and her
alibi weren't the only issue cops faced when it came
(17:30):
to solving the Dean Vest murder. There weren't any clean
prints on the murder weapon, for one. Also, they couldn't
figure out the motive just what had happened between Vanda
and the huge Dean Vest. You can hear that here
in their initial questioning with Vonda trying to work out
the motive. They were both known members of Hervil's cult.
(17:54):
Why would she kill Dean? Have you recently ran the past?
And any disagree with Mr h The police have blanked
out Dean's name in the recordings here as anyone living
in the house at a discool Mr we random charms.
Gary stuck with it. I was able to defuse the alibi. First,
(18:20):
he dug into Linda's background, found some welfare fraud and
used the threat of charges against Linda Johnson to spook
her into cooperating if she had testified in the trial.
I could have easily impeached her, and so she chose
to stay in Denver and I never saw her again.
Vonda's alibi was gone, but Vonda was still in the wind,
(18:41):
and Gary still didn't have a motive. The years passed
see and into February of seventy eight, but then Lloyd
Sullivan was arrested. Flipped the former Herville foot soldier now
with his axe to grind against Hervil. And once he
(19:03):
started giving information to the cops, he didn't just right
out Herville for the killing of Ruben Alred. I'm going
to show you a photograph. I recognize this photo. I
recognize this as a lady who calls herself Vonda White,
gene Wal a number of other aliases. Yes, I do
(19:26):
recognize that this is Lloyd Sullivan from that interview with
cops on March where he's about to lay out for them.
Just why Vonda White shot Deean vest and herbal mmle
Baron told me he had turned trader to the Kingdom
of God. Excuse man must die, He must die because
(19:50):
he was a trader of the Kingdom in what period
of time with this must have been in the early
part of and the next thing. I know Bonda White,
he had had a commandment from herbal the killing. So
sometime later, I suppose you wanted to get it up
her chest. I don't know if she trusted Nick quite
(20:10):
well and indicated several times she thought quite well of me,
And it seemed like we were standing in the kitchen,
and I can recall and vividly standing there and she
told me that she did indeed kill. That broke the
case wide open. Prosecutor Gary Remple couldn't believe his luck.
(20:35):
Sullivan told the story how Vonda White had killed Dean
vest She had intercepted a phone call or happened to
pick up an extension where he was arranging to meet
with the FBI in Seattle, where his wife had moved.
He was defecting to the FBI, and he was going
to bring along a trunk full of automatic weapons, sniper rifles,
(20:58):
and explosives. What's more, Lloyd agreed to say all this
in court to take the stand. So Lloyd was instrumental
in Lloyd Lloyd was my principal witness. Then more good news.
In March seventy eight, not long after Lloyd's testimony, there
was another break in the case. Vonda was apprehended, but
(21:21):
it seems the good news couldn't last, and as the
case moved to trial, Lloyd got spooked. By now he
was effectively living in a witness protection program. He genuinely
feared for his life, and then he had his location
revealed by local newspaper in the Utah town where he
was hiding out. He was under an assumed name in
(21:43):
a small town in the suburb area of Salt Lake City.
They even published a picture of him, and Lloyd knew
better than anyone just how dangerous this was. After all,
he'd helped plan many of the cults killings. He was
getting extremely paranoid. He was sure he'd be recognized in
(22:04):
that town and killed. Also, he had a drinking problem,
I should tell you that, so he wasn't in the
best of health. A drunk paranoid not exactly a good
mix for a man in hiding, and Lloyd was becoming
increasingly convinced that some of Hervill's killers were around each
corner waiting for him. He needed a new identity, something
(22:27):
to help him avoid detection. In May of seventy eight,
he called his handlers in the police and told them
begged them to help. So he's in a phone booth
prior to cell phones, calling the Salt Lake Police Department
where his connections were, And as that occurred, a car
(22:48):
drove by and backfired, mistaking it for a shot. He
died of a heart attack. Gary Remple's star witness, was
head killed, not by Herville, but by a backfiring car.
And that wasn't the only bump in the road that's
(23:09):
coming up after the break. It was the summer of
(23:43):
and the heat was on for Gary Remple, that prosecutor
who liked to stare down gang members and killers. As
the trial of Vonda White got underway, even he felt
an unnerving tension in the air, not just the usual
pressure on the cops and prosecutors for a conviction or
even a conviction against the coult With Herville still at large,
(24:07):
there was a real risk to life to everyone involved
in these court cases. Rvill Le Baron had taken his
belief in what he called the law of force and
morphed it into this blood atonement, a theology which wasn't
simply based on vengeance, but rather that a killing could
(24:28):
be a form of compassion. For her defense in court,
Erville's group had pulled their tithing and hired Vonda an
expensive team of private defense attorneys. We'd have these arguments
and they'd be a sidebar. They'd get quite animated. And
(24:48):
during one of these arguments, halfway through the case, things
were getting pretty heavy and suddenly the lights went out
in the courtroom. At least one or two jur screamed.
I had grabbed one of the guys that was slouching
and put him in front of me with my back
to the wall the courtroom. I had my back to
(25:10):
the wall, a defense attorney in front of me, and
I was pulling out my derringer. When the lights came
back on one of these guys slouching against the wall
had inadvertently turned off the lights. Gary's eyes light up
telling me this tale. He has this mischievous panache when
he's telling all his best stories. But the fact that
(25:32):
he grabbed someone else for cover, I think that shows
just how scared everyone actually was. A Hervill's colt at
this point in the late seventies of their reach, would
they really hit a courtroom mid trial? Gary clearly thought
they might. And if Gary had sensed he had reason
to fear for his own life and just trying to
(25:54):
prosecute this cult. He was right. The Colt had put
a hit out on Arry. In fact, during his investigation
into Rvil, a baron, the man himself had sent three
of his most efficient assassins, his right hand man, Dan
Jordan's Marchin and Eddie Marston, to Gary's home to kill him.
(26:17):
About eleven o'clock one night, I was awakened by a
phone call from the San Diego Police Department that the
FBI had just contacted them. FBI told him they'd wire
tap Rville, and the word came out. Rvill had ordered
three guys to come up and kill me, to drive
up from en Sonata to my house and kill me.
(26:37):
They had my address en sonatas about two hours from
where I lived. There. In the time it took the
FBI to get this information from their wire tap relay
it to the cops who related it to Gary, precious
time had been lost. Rvil's hit team had a two
hour drive to their target. So all I had was
(27:00):
a snub nose thirty eight and I was on a
cul de sac, and I didn't know if they were
coming up the cul de sac, so like I couldn't
leave the area. So I ran across the street to
the neighbor and I borrowed his German shepherd, big Dog,
and uh, I brought him to guard the front door. Well,
that German shepherd started whining. He could sense my attention.
I was high amps and he started whining and crying
(27:23):
by the front door, and I thought, it's gonna be
a liability if he defecates on the floor while I'm
trying to shoot it out with these guys. So I
took him back to the neighbor and I stood there
for my thirty eight opened that the cops got there
before the crooks, and uh, sure enough the cops made it.
Then there's a bunch of cars. The hit team assigned
to Gary must have seen those lights and aborted the mission.
(27:47):
Then along about then a couple of day investigators showed up.
And the byproducts of this whole episode was I had
to move out of my house. I lived under a
phony name in a hotel for a while until all
this was over. Trying a member of hervill Abaron's colt
had nearly cost Gary his life, and then another setback.
(28:09):
In July of seventy eight, the judge in the case
suddenly declared a mistrial. He didn't like my style because
it conflicted with his style, is what I think. We
were kind of going back and forth in time, and
I'm having a good old day in court as far
as I was concerned, and so we had a little argument,
and his cure for my misbehavior was to declare a mistrial.
(28:30):
But maybe set back is the wrong word, because Gary,
that kid from Stockton, was ready for another round. Gary
got some more insider information on the Colt. It turns
out round one with Gary and Court his punches had
done some damage. After that mistrial, I went out to
a restaurant for lunch with the three defense attorneys and
(28:55):
they admitted to me they're running through the cult's money.
You know. The side effect of this whole case was
that I broke the bank. Gary smelled blood in the water.
When the second trial came, I was really pumped up
because I knew they were suffering and I was only
going to get stronger. I wasn't gonna get weaker. On
(29:18):
the first of May nine, just a few months after
the acquittal of Riena Chinath, the second trial against Vonda
White began and the court we're using similar tactics from
those that had freed Rena and her accomplices. They blame
the killing on one of the witnesses for the prosecution,
Don Sullivan, Gary had seen that move coming a mile away.
(29:43):
I found out that at the time Dean Vest was
murdered by Vonda White, Don Sullivan was in another state
standing at the window of a teller making a bank deposit.
I got that teller, and when I put him on
the stand, they were done for. He had the receipt
(30:05):
and there was a signature that we matched the handwriting
on of down, proving irrevocably through an independent witness that
he was standing at the teller's window, and the teller
besides remembered him. The case was basically over at that point.
Shortly thereafter went the jury after just two hours of deliberation.
(30:29):
Just two hours, that's all it took. After all these
years of unaccounted for slayings by Herbal's colts, Herville promised
these people that if they took these callings, they could
never be convicted of a crime because they hadn't really
committed a crime in their hearts. And more importantly, it
(30:52):
showed that they could be convicted of murder, and they
couldn't get away with it. For the first time, one
of Hervil's assassin's had been convicted, and it was like
a spell had been broken. Vanda sentencing would take place
in mid June of seventy nine, and by then another
arrest would have taken place, this time over the border
(31:14):
in Mexico. Prosecutor David Yoakum, who had failed to get
a conviction against Rena and the other cult members, was
about to get another shot, this time at Erville himself.
He had grown pretty free up till that time, even
as a fugitive from a murder case in Utah, probably
(31:34):
bought his way out of every problem he had down there.
But Erville's time living as a fugitive in Mexico was
about to be up. He had caused some problems down
there and members of his group and assaulted Mexican nationals.
Mexican law enforcement received a tip about Rvil's exact whereabouts.
(31:55):
They just got fed up with him and notified the
US authorities that he had been apprehended and was on
his way. In the past, he had managed to get
out of prison and walk away, but this time he'd
been driven straight to the border, met the federal authorities
there and our investigators, and that tip the Mexican cops
(32:17):
received about Hervil's exact whereabouts. It had come from Larive Stubbs,
still tracking Herbal's whereabouts all these years later from down
in Colonial LeBaron. We hadn't figured out to take him
right to the border handcuffed, and they did. The guys
took off their foot cuffs and their handcuffs and told
(32:39):
them to get out and walk, and he did, and
they said, and if you try to run, we'll shoot
your feet. They stood right there and they walked across
the border, and we had like thirty officials they're waiting
for him. Herville LeBaron had been arrested. That's coming up
after the break m. The city of Laredo sits on
(33:16):
the northern bank of the Rio Grand one ft in
Texas one in the Mexican state of tom Alippus on
the southern bank of the river. This is where Rena
was handed over to U S authorities, and now the
same fate met Hervill le Baron. But when Herville crossed
(33:36):
over into the arms of US law enforcement in June
of the image had to be a letdown to all
those who had been reading about this so called Mormon manson.
The guy didn't look scary or impressive. Even his lawyer
was a little taken aback when he saw him the
(33:58):
first images of grand fatherly figure sitting in a jail jumpsuit.
Public defender Bruce Lubeck was one of three lawyers assigned
to Herville to try and make his case in the
upcoming trial. My first impression was, they've got the wrong
guy here. This isn't Irva LeBaron, the evil looking, dynamic
(34:19):
figure that controls young people and multiple wives and has
killed people. This is a kindly looking, gentle, meek looking
old man who looks beaten down and tired, and didn't
seem to be dynamic. He seemed very low key, And
I said, you know how, I don't know how he
could get anybody to do anything, you know what I mean,
(34:42):
Why would anyone follow him? Irvill was charged with first
degree murder for Dr Rulin already and first degree conspiracy
to murder Virlin LeBaron for that botched assassination attempt. The
group had planned for Dr Alred's funeral. The lawyers hoped
Irvill would give them something they could use as a
compelling defense. It seemed Hervil felt this was something they
(35:05):
didn't need to worry about. It was in God's hands,
and God had always protected him. He felt that somehow
his truth was going to prevail and that I I
was one who was going to help that come about.
And I said to myself, I'm a lowly public defender
in a small city in Utah, and I doubt that
(35:26):
I'm a world changer. I knew I wasn't. And I
told him that, and he said, oh no, no, don't
sell yourself short. There's miracles going to come out of this.
And he believed it. But as Hervil laid out his
beliefs and justifications to his lawyers, it was hard for
them to keep up. We'd go into a small room
of metal walls, no windows, metal door that they locked
(35:50):
from the outside, and they'd say knock when you're done.
Then he would start on his preaching, often in one
way or another. And I regret to say this and
it but it's in retrospect, it was part of it.
I can remember I've got my legal pad there and
I'm holding my pen and taking notes, you know, and
he's talking and and I would drop my pencil and
(36:13):
it would wake me up, and I just kind of
fell asleep a couple times. He never said, oh am
I boring you? Sorry. He was always very kinous. Oh yeah,
it's a hard time of day to stay awake, isn't
it can be? You know he was. He never got
upset at that, but I know I fell asleep. Mhm.
(36:40):
The trial of Herbal a Baron began on Wednesday, May
the fourteenth. A new decade had arrived in the hunt
against Herville and his colt, with the optimism that the
saga was approaching its end. On that Wednesday, Prosecutor David
Yoakum stood across the courtroom from Herville in the dot
(37:01):
He looked very um pale. I would say he looked weak.
He said quietly, and behaved himself. He was never a problem.
He never got out of hand, but a lot of
the witnesses said that he tried to stare him down,
and a lot of the witnesses felt his spirit or
(37:24):
his feelings or emotions felt really they were being threatened
or indirectly through him in the courtroom. After previous failures,
Yoakum wasn't taking any chances this time. He brought in
the big guns to testify. I testified against him in
his trial, which was tough. Larie Stubbs, who had known
(37:46):
Herville since the early days of colonial LeBaron, was anxious
for her chance to face herbal down. I've never done
anything like that in my life, and I was really upset.
They had to work with me for three and a
half days to get me to have the confidence to
go in there and just say only what I needed
(38:08):
to say. I don't have any qualms, but it was
a day good testimony. Herville was going to make the
fundamentalists the Alreads pay their tithing and if they didn't,
he would just have to start getting rid of him.
And that's the statement I made, and I of course
said it exactly proper in court. And when I left,
(38:30):
I was shaken beyond because they're all sitting right there
trying to eye me down, because he told his lawyers,
if I can make eye contact with her, I can
break her down. So my lawyers warned me not to
look at him, not once, because he sat like closer
than that chair, and I'm sitting right here. I think
(38:53):
that he did believe if I can make eye contact,
I can mix her up, like mesmerize you because he
did do that to lot of people and he didn't
know how. But I wasn't one of them. I wasn't
scared of that. I wasn't scared of Hervill because I
knew how to dodge him. I had already proved hundred times.
He was probably more scared of me than I was
(39:13):
at him in the end. Next up on the stand
for the prosecution was Erville's teenage son, Isaac, the one
who had been at the April seventy seven meeting when
Herville ordered the ruling already killing. He was the most
emotional and I think most believable witness The prosecution had
(39:34):
certainly much believable in the defense witnesses. They're all allied
through their teeth. But Isaac had to come forward reluctantly
because he had been threatened all of his life. In
a short time he had lived that he was never
to talk to the police, never to give information about it,
the group, or his father or anyone else. So it
(39:58):
was very hard for him, as young man too to
come forward and speak on behalf of the prosecution at trial.
So when he got on the stand, there was a
lot of tension in the courtroom. Prosecutor David Yoachum asked
what did Isaac think would happen to him if the
Colt caught up with him after this court appearance. He
(40:21):
basically said, if he should ever be caught by a
member of the group or he faced them directly, that
he had probably killed. So he was always under the
impression that he had the death penalty assessed against him,
and when he testified to that, it was to me
very believable. Rvil had his witnesses too, people like Rville's
(40:41):
right hand man, Dan Jordan's, filed into the courtroom as
family and cult members called out the prosecution witnesses as liars.
It was they who were the violent ones, as defectors
from his church. Rville was a peace loving preacher being framed,
they said, and end the defense and prosecution rested their case.
(41:05):
It seems kind of strange, given how long the build
up to this day had been, that the trial lasted
just fourteen days. Which side of the Colt would jury
members believe like Plato's cave. Was it going to be
the ones who remained in the cave or those whose
eyes had gotten used to the light outside of Herb's colts.
(41:27):
The answer didn't take long. Just three hours later, the
jury returned to court with a verdict. Hervill's lawyer, Bruce Lubeck,
looked on the jury files back in and the judge says,
I understand the jury has arrived at a verdict. The
fourth person sents and and says, yes, that's true, and
he says, handed to the bailiff. The bailiff takes the form,
(41:50):
hands it to the judge. The judge lex over it
and so he knows before anybody, and then hands it
to the his clerk and says, the clerk will read
the verdict. Has the defendants stand and we stand with him?
And then the clear Creets says, the State of Utah
versserve labart in case number one two three, As to
count one, we the jury, Dooley and paneled an above
(42:12):
entitle matter find the defendant Hervil LeBaron guilty of conspiracy
to commit murder of first degree felony. And then the
judge says to the jury, so say you one and all.
Irville had been found guilty of conspiring to kill Virlin
LeBaron and guilty of first degree murder for the death
of Dr Alred Well. Of course, there was a lot
(42:35):
of weeping and part of his that followed him. Cult
members in court were outraged. This was not in God's plan.
This judge said, no, no, I'll have no outburs and
he would bang his gavel. Nobody bangs the gavel anymore,
but he did all the time. He wore it out.
But how no outburst or I'll clear the courtroom. And
he was very aggressive. Judge Herville remained strangely calm. Even
(43:02):
Rvill's lawyer was surprised by his reaction. There's certainly no
outburst from him, nothing from him. And he said, okay, now,
well now we'll get to work on this and we'll
get this straightened out. So thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate
everything you've done for me. Why wasn't Rvil more upset
at a verdict that would likely mean he would spend
(43:23):
the rest of his life behind bars. Surely this was
the end for him, for his cult, for the Church
of the Lamb of God. Clearly Irvil didn't think so.
I did then and even more fully now believe he
believed he simply had a role to play. There's this sculpture.
(43:46):
This is that there should be one mighty and strong
and regardless of what he faced in this life, and
he believed it. I believe he believed it, and the
rest of us were just playing in air, and he
had the word of God and no one else did.
Hervill was eventually transferred to a Utah prison, but there
this attitude of acceptance, just biding his time remained. I
(44:09):
went to see him in the prison that more as
a hand holding effort. Uh. He was never what I
considered depressed or suicidal, or there was optimism. Somehow things
would prevail, right would prevail, his view of things would triumph,
and uh he would come off the victor somehow. Even
at that my last meetings, he was he was going
(44:30):
to prevail. Hervill started preaching to fellow inmates, trying to
recruit them. But while he sat in prison, the members
of his cult on the outside, more of them had
started to leave the cave and see the fire burning outside,
just like in Plato's cave. They were coming to perceive
reality in the same way as those on the outside.
(44:53):
All started saying things in his doctrine and things and
he had done, and things he had said that just
you know, we just couldn't ignore them anymore. This is
Rena Channath during her interview with the writer Dean Shapiro
for her book years later. He was doing things that
weren't since that that made no sense. He was saying
(45:14):
things that didn't make any sense. Free from Herville's grasp
from the late seventies, Rena had started to build a
life away from the cult. Was this the last time
you saw him? I didn't going to see him. I
didn't see him. I hadn't seen since Mexico, So you
never did see him again? I just I couldn't. Rena
wasn't the only one who was splitting away from the
(45:36):
cult at this point. Lots of other members were moving
on to some like her brother's Mark, Dwayne, and Victor
were trying and succeeding to build lives outside the cult.
For Herville, these defections were the worst kind of betrayal,
and from his cell he directed his rage at them.
(45:59):
Into the pen. He had nothing but time to write,
and from his early days in colonial le Baron, he
could go days writing, sometimes without sleep. Prison officers peered
into a cell, wondering what was he writing in there?
Locked away, his followers leaving him, It didn't seem to matter.
(46:22):
The insignificant ramblings of a madman. Then one day in August,
they peered into his cell and saw something else, Herville
dead on the floor. Detective speculating about the precise cause
(46:44):
of death would tell the press. Maybe he took an
overdose of drugs, his throat was damaged, maybe he suffocated
after striking himself in the neck. But the Utah Medical
Examiner's office concluded it was a heart attack. And it
almost seemed like no one really cared about the actual cause.
(47:05):
The important thing was it was finally over. Rvil A Baron,
the cult, the misery, the crime, the murders. It was finished.
At least that's what it seemed to the people of
colonial le Baron, to the mainstream Mormon Church, scandalized and
(47:28):
embarrassed by this rogue, bastard child souling their good name
to the former cult members. Finally, blessedly it was all over.
But it wasn't. In some ways, Irville's death was just
the beginning of something far more monstrous, organized, and ruthless
(47:53):
than anything that had come before. I was nine years old.
I had made a vow that I would give my
life just by being in the cold, just by being
born into it, and when a person had to die,
it was so that that person could be saved, so
we didn't see it as an evil that's coming up
(48:17):
in episode eight of deliver Us from Herville. Deliver Us
from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written
and reported by me Leona Hamid and David Waters. Production
(48:41):
from Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and Max
O'Brien are executive producers. Lena Chang and Megan Oyinka are researchers.
Marianna Gongora is our field producer. Fact checking by Donya
Suleman and Sona Avakian. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie
(49:01):
Taylor and Charlotte Wolfe. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor.
Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production. Gavin Haynes
is our head of Development. Willard Foxton is our creative
director of Development. Mix scoring and sound designed by Eli Block.
Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music
(49:26):
is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson,
Scott Carrier, del van Ada, Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards Matt O'Mara,
Katrina Norville and beth Ann Macaluso, Oran Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman,
and all the team at U t A. For more
from Novel, visit novel dot Audio
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