Jon Krakauer - Under the banner of heaven: a story of violent faith

Under the Banner of Heaven

Jon Krakauer

PROLOGUE

Almost everyone in Utah County has heard of the Lafferty boys. Thats mostly a function of the lurid murders, of course, but the Lafferty surname had a certain prominence in the county even before Brenda and Erica Lafferty were killed. Watson Lafferty, the patriarch of the clan, was a chiropractor who ran a thriving practice out of his home in downtown Provos historic quarter. He and his wife, Claudine, had six boys and two girls, in whom they instilled an unusually strong work ethic and intense devotion to the Mormon Church. The entire family was admired for its industriousness and probity.

Allenthe youngest of the Lafferty children, now in his mid-fortiesworks as a tile setter, a trade he has plied since he was a teenager. In the summer of 1984 he was living with his twenty-four-year-old wife and baby daughter in American Fork, a sleepy, white-bread suburb alongside the freeway that runs from Provo to Salt Lake City. Brenda, his spouse, was a onetime beauty queen recognized around town from her tenure as the anchor of a newsmagazine program on channel 11, the local PBS affiliate. Although she had abandoned her nascent broadcasting career to marry Allen and start a family, Brenda had lost none of the exuberance that had endeared her to television viewers. Warm and outgoing, shed made a lasting impression.

On the morning of July 24, 1984, Allen left their small duplex apartment before the sun was up and drove eighty miles up the interstate to work at a construction site east of Ogden. During his lunch break he phoned Brenda, who chatted with him for a minute before putting their fifteen-month-old daughter, Erica, on the line. Erica gurgled a few words of baby talk; then Brenda told her husband everything was fine and said good-bye.

Allen arrived home around eight that evening, tired from the long workday. He walked up to the front door and was surprised to find it locked; they almost never locked their doors. He used his key to enter, and then was surprised again by the baseball game blaring from the television in the living room. Neither he nor Brenda liked baseballthey never watched it. After hed turned off the TV, the apartment seemed preternaturally quiet to him, as though nobody was home. Allen figured Brenda had taken the baby and gone out. I turned to go and see if maybe she was at the neighbors, he explained later, and I noticed some blood near the door on a light switch. And then he saw Brenda in the kitchen, sprawled on the floor in a lake of blood.

Upon calling Brendas name and getting no reply, he knelt beside her and put his hand on her shoulder. I touched her, he said, and her body felt cool There was blood on her face and pretty much everywhere. Allen reached for the kitchen phone, which was resting on the floor next to his wife, and dialed 911 before he realized there was no dial tone. The cord had been yanked from the wall. As he walked to their bedroom to try the extension in there, he glanced into the babys room and saw Erica slumped over in her crib in an odd position, motionless. She was wearing nothing but a diaper, which was soaked with blood, as were the blankets surrounding her.

Allen hurried to the master bedroom only to find the phone in there out of order, as well, so he went next door to a neighbors apartment, where he was finally able to call for help. He described the carnage to the 911 dispatcher, then called his mother.

While he waited for the police to show up, Allen returned to his apartment. I went to Brenda and I prayed, he said. And then as I stood, I surveyed the situation a little more, and realized that there had been a grim struggle. For the first time he noticed that the blood wasnt confined to the kitchen: it smeared the living room walls, the floor, the doors, the curtains. It was obvious to him who was responsible. Hed known the moment hed first seen Brenda on the kitchen floor.

The cops took Allen down to the American Fork police station and grilled him throughout the night. They assumed he was the murderer; the husband usually is. By and by, however, Allen convinced them that the prime suspect was actually the oldest of his five brothers, Ron Lafferty. Ron had just returned to Utah County after spending most of the previous three months traveling around the West with another Lafferty brother, Dan. An APB went out for Rons car, a pale green 1974 Impala station wagon with Utah plates.

The slayings appeared to be ritualistic, which drew uncommon attention from the news media and put the public on edge. By the next evening the Lafferty killings led news broadcasts across the state. On Thursday, July 26, a headline on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribune announced,

WIDESPREAD SEARCH UNDER WAY FOR AMERICAN FORK MURDER SUSPECT

By Mike Gorrell, Tribune Staff Writer And Ann Shields, Tribune Correspondent

American FORKLawmen in Utah and surrounding states searched Wednesday for a former Highland, Utah County, city councilman and religious fundamentalist charged with the Tuesday murders of his sister-in-law and her 15-month-old baby.

Ronald Watson Lafferty, 42, no address available, was charged with two counts of capital homicide in the deaths of Brenda Wright Lafferty, 24, and her daughter, Erica Lane

American Fork police have not established a motive for the killings and have refused to comment on rumors that the suspect, an excommunicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was involved with either polygamist or fundamentalist religious sects and that those ties may have contributed to the killings

Neighbors expressed disbelief that this sort of thing could happen in their area.

The whole towns in shock that such a thing could happen in a nice quiet community like American Fork. People who said they had never locked their doors said they were going to now, said one neighbor who asked not to be identified.

Ken Beck, a bishop in the American Fork LDS ward which Allen and Brenda Lafferty attended, said they were a nice ordinary couple, active in church affairs.

Immediately below this story, also on the front page, was an accompanying piece:

NEIGHBORS RECALL CHANGES IN MURDER SUSPECT, 42

Special to The Tribune

AMERICAN FORKA determined man who evolved from an active Mormon and conservative Republican to a strict constitutionalist and excommunicated fundamentalist is how neighbors remember Ronald Watson Lafferty

Mr. Lafferty served on Highlands first City Council when the small northern Utah County town was incorporated in 1977. At the time, Mr. Lafferty successfully led a drive to outlaw beer sales in the towns only grocery storewhere travelers to American Fork Canyon still cant buy beer.

Two years ago, he looked clean, all-American, even in the mornings after milking the family cow, said a neighbor who resides in an acre-lot subdivision filled with children, horses, goats, chickens and large garden plots where Mr. Lafferty once lived.

Last year he and his wife of several years divorced. Mr. Lafferty has not been seen in the neighborhood for a year.

Shortly after Christmas, Mrs. Diana Lafferty, described as a pillar of the Mormon ward, took the couples six children out of state.

Neighbors said the divorce stemmed from differences of opinion on religion and politics.

He talked about standing up for what was rightno matter the consequences, said a neighbor.

Friends said Mr. Laffertys political beliefs changed as wellor perhaps evolvedfrom conservative Republican to strict fundamentalism. During the 12 years he lived in Highland, he came to believe in a return to the gold standard, strict constitutionalism and obedience only to righteous laws, said a neighbor.

He had a fervent desire to save the Constitutionand the country, said a long-time friend. It became a religious obsession.