Preface: 'God's Executioner: The Ervil LeBaron Tragedy'

God's Executioner: The Ervil LeBaron Tragedy

By DeWayne Hafen

Most of us have heard the name of Ervil LeBaron: the Mormon Manson, the Prophet of Blood, the Cain who murdered his brother...

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, he was responsible for the death of an estimated thirty-three victims, slain in the United States and Mexico. Many were his own followers, immediate family, and relatives.

Why bring up this old story after so many years? First, because it has been reported incorrectly. Most authors have been guilty of an attribution bias. They have blamed personal or inborn genetic qualities and ignored the situational factors that formed Ervil’s personality. This erroneous telling has negatively affected many people. With his thirteen wives, he fathered more than fifty children. Most of these children have been judged and traumatized simply because they are Ervil’s descendants and the misattributed emphasis on genetically induced insanity.  Because of whom their father was, they have led a difficult and negatively impacted life. Many of them were so young that they never knew him. Some don’t carry the LeBaron name. Even when people do not know Ervil was their father, his children do, and it hurts. I share grandchildren and great-grandchildren with him, so I have personal knowledge of that trauma.

This is an attempt to understand how a loving, self-sacrificing, devoutly religious, individual changed and became a mass murderer. It is an attempt to understand Ervil LeBaron. 

Others have written about what I am going to tell you. Most engaged in speculation and sensationalization. What I am writing first is the verifiable history needed to understand the situational effect, then the pertinent facts to which I have personal knowledge of. I do not need to speculate or invent as so many have. The facts are sensational enough.

What are my qualifications for this?

I first met Ervil in 1963. I personally witnessed many of the things that I believe led to his insanity. Because of family ties I have knowledge of other influences.  I was an active member of what was known as the Standing High Council for his brother Joel’s church. That leadership position allowed me to see and hear for myself things that many have only been able to speculate about. Some of those things led me to join Ervil’s dissident church in its infancy. This was before the killings began. I later had a personal epiphany that showed me where his church was going. It frightened me into leaving immediately. I publicly renounced him and again aligned myself with the church headed by his brother Joel LeBaron. 

After Joel’s, the brother of Ervil, murder, Ervil spent months evading capture. The knowledgeable, viable witnesses left the country to investigate some property in a remote area of Nicaragua. Knowing this, Ervil seized on a quirk in Mexican law. As soon as an accused person is in custody sufficient evidence for an indictment must be presented within a small, 72-hour window of time. Realizing the impossibility of anyone returning quickly, Ervil turned himself into the authorities. He thought no one was available to testify against him. 

But I was. 

I testified with enough evidence to indict him. He was held for trial until those with more evidence could return, resulting in his conviction. Overturning his conviction required a substantial bribe. These things put me among those he ordered killed as a required “blood atonement”. 

Ervil’s followers attempted to “blood atone” me in 1974 during the “Los Molinos Christmas Massacre”. Believing I was home, his followers firebombed my house, killed two people, and wounded thirteen others who attempted to save my house. That story has never been told accurately either.

Many people have told the Ervil LeBaron story in a way to make themselves look good and others look bad. Some facts have been obscured or inaccurately depicted. Some wrote their versions plagiarizing those untrue stories, usually with added speculation and dramatization. Some have written seeking sympathy, fame, and fortune. These are the worst because they are the furthest from the truth. Unfortunately, they are now considered historically accurate. 

They are not even close to accurate, but history is established by those who write. 

Since those stories of Ervil’s history are so biased, I feel it is my obligation to write the story from an alternative position. I hope to show what made him become a psychopathic killer. And show how much of it was our fault; Yes, ours. We, the fanatic followers who parked our brains, sacrificed our integrity, aiding and abetting the transition into insanity by blindly following him and our other ecclesiastical leaders. We believed we were doing God’s will. 

I am an old man and have outlived most, if not all the people I will write about. They can neither confirm nor rebut anything I tell you. Group memories and reminiscences have demonized Ervil and deified his brother Joel. Many of the things I tell you will challenge the written and oral histories. Their followers and descendants may take offense at what I tell you. Some will say I have it wrong because their now-deceased relative told them differently or they read a book.

Long ago, I learned that just because it is in a book doesn't make it true. I also learned that memories are easily modified, usually without intention. People believe their modified memories, so they are not knowingly telling a lie.

All I can say about the things I tell you is that I was there. These will be my personal, first-hand impressions, understandings, and observations. 

I have kept private notes over the years. It seems I have been preparing to write this for at least fifty years. I have made several attempts to explain, understand, and learn from what happened to Ervil. Fortunately, in this information age, I have been able to preserve those attempts. This has kept my memories from fading or changing, as memories often do for most people. The only modifications to my memories are details that I did not know or misunderstood at the time I wrote them down. If I somehow have something wrong, I welcome corrections.

The world has no shortage of religious and political fanatics. Mormonism has produced more than its share of leaders who have abused their position. They and their followers, believing themselves to be guided by God, have done unthinkable things. The history of religion is filled with horrors committed in the name of God. We need to examine and learn what factors lead to these atrocities. 

Perhaps more importantly, we need to look at how these leaders attract and control their followers. And how their faithful followers encourage them to become more fanatical. There seems to be a synergetic relationship. If the leader is abusive, the followers either become surrogate abusers or willing victims. This, in turn, encourages the leaders to become more abusive. 

Without willing followers, there can be no empowered leaders.

To my knowledge, Ervil never killed anyone himself. It was all done in the name of God by his fanatically obedient followers. 

Hopefully, by reading this, we can gain some understanding. We can then avoid becoming those people who abandon their intelligence and integrity to follow the dictates of a self-proclaimed prophet of God. More importantly, we can cease to be enablers, justifying and supporting the actions of these abusive individuals.

“All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred, and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. “ (Hoffer, 1951) 

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