50 Years in Polygamy: Big Secrets and Little White Lies Read online

  Many of the matriarchs in The Group claimed, “The sooner first wives live plural marriage, the easier it will be. The longer you wait, the more difficult it will be to share your husband with sister-wives.”

  It didn’t matter how hard I tried to think pure, honorable thoughts and to be the supportive wife I should be. Even though Mark’s (and other men’s) flirting and attraction to other girls was justified by the precept of living polygamy, it always felt like a blow in the stomach to me. Still, I refused to let an evil spirit hold me back. For God’s, Mark’s, and our children’s sake, I continued to put on my lovely smile in the presence of others. I held my head and shoulders high just like the other women around me did. I was pretty good at pretending and hoping everything would come up rosy.

  *****

  Several young Independent girls signed up for girls’ camp. The camp directors decided they couldn’t all be in the same camp. That would be disastrous. The Independent girls had “apostate, alcoholic, smoking” parents and were considered wild if not completely wayward. They could, and most likely would, lead “our girls” astray. So the directors decided they’d blend a couple of “goody-goody” Allredite girls and a few “middle-ground” girls with the three or four “wild” (Independent) girls. They hoped their arrangement would maintain a balance and help keep order. And since the leaders figured I’d had the most experience with the Independents, I got the privilege of being camp counselor for the mixture of goody-two-shoes and the wild-side.

  At first there was an obvious gap and a major passive-aggressive struggle between the girls. Around the campfire, I asked them to list the things we all held in common. After we discussed those things, we listed things we thought were different about all of us and discussed why each of us felt the need to be right. In the end, the girls decided it was important for all of them to be kind and accepting of each other, even if they didn’t agree. With renewed sensitivity and compassion, the girls were plowing through and making headway. I imagined these buddies would last until we all went back to our own narrow worlds.

  Laura, one of Jon’s many beautiful daughters had a bubbly personality and a gorgeous smile. In the middle of the night after all the girls were asleep, she began screaming. All of us woke up, petrified. By the time I crawled out of my sleeping bag, over all the other girls and got to her, she was wet with perspiration and shaking uncontrollably. Nothing I or anyone else said consoled her. Laura couldn’t or wouldn’t say one intelligible word.

  We begged her to tell us what was wrong, to calm down and to talk to us. Everything we tried failed. Twenty minutes or more had passed and still we didn’t know what to do to help her. The other girls were terrified and upset, and everyone was crying. So I grudgingly asked two of the brave girls to take a flashlight and find her father. I didn’t want Jon Thomas near our tent, but since he was Laura’s dad, I thought that was my only option.

  When Jon, the girls’ camp priesthood representative, came to our tent to get Laura, she became even more hysterical and combative. As he carried her away, she shrieked and cried, “No! Stop, I won’t! No! Please, no!” Her desperate voice faded into the night.

  We tried to guess what Laura’s frenzy was all about—a horrifying nightmare, a desperate need for attention, an evil spirit? If only I’d have known.

  With my whole being I wanted to console and love her. I hadn’t wanted to ask her father, but I had felt helpless. “Forgive me,” I begged God. “I am so sorry! I didn’t know what else to do,” I implored God at least a hundred times before I cried myself to asleep.

  *****

  Saturday, after the long week at camp, my ride dropped me off at home. I stood there in shock. All I could see were piles and piles of dirt around a massive, rectangular hole in the ground. As I got closer and realized the footings to our new home had been poured, I screamed in delight.

  “We nearly didn’t make it in time to surprise you,” Mark called. He hurried over, enfolded me in his muddy arms, and planted a bunch of sweaty kisses all over my face. “Whew! We just barely finished this part. We only have a little more to do and you can move in.” We laughed and I held him tight.

  *****

  “We’ve committed a cardinal sin!” I cried out. “I’ve got another period.” I was sure God was punishing us for using birth control. Now that we wanted to get pregnant, I couldn’t. It was God’s way of telling us, “I told you so!”

  My loving husband was pretty good at helping me understand some of my issues with God. Mark’s intellect never ceased to amaze me!

  “I’m telling you, Sophia, it isn’t God punishing us. All we did was use the rhythm method to prevent a child from coming to us before we were ready. It’s apparently not the right time for us to have another baby, and when it is, you’ll get pregnant again. Meanwhile—” he beamed “—we’ll have a lot of fun trying to make one.”

  Mark’s body was so close not even air could pierce through our loving. “You see, Sophia,” he said, “if God didn’t want humans to enjoy each other as we do, He would never have created such pleasure for us. It’s a damn good thing we didn’t know how good this feeling was before we got married, or you’d have been pregnant for sure. I bet you are this time.”

  While in Mark’s embrace, I felt tears slide down my cheeks. My heart heaved to release the weight. Not the heaviness of his body or the depths of soul connection we felt so intensely, but the excruciating pain always haunting me. How could Mark ever share this—our love, his heart, his body—with Norma, our babysitter, who was becoming ever more enamored with him? For that matter, how could he share this with anyone but me? Why would a loving god require me, other women, to suffer this pain?

  CHAPTER 19

  Evil Ervil

  1975

  Since the beginning of time, the world has been cursed with egotistical, grandiose men, each one claiming his authority over others was ordained by God Himself.

  There’s an obvious pattern with many of these psycho-fanatics: James Warren “Jim” Jones, of the People’s Temple, who led the mass suicide of more than nine hundred cult members in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978; David Koresh, of the Branch Davidian religious sect, where fifty-four adults and twenty-one children died in a fire at Mt. Carmel, Texas, in April 1993; and Ron and Dan Lafferty, who slit the throats of their sister-in-law Brenda and her infant Erica in 1984, and claimed God commanded them to. The list of religious fanatics goes on, but another man at the top was Ervil LeBaron. As Irene Spencer wrote,

  “Obsessed by his lust for power, Ervil LeBaron became intoxicated by his own self-worth” (Cult Insanity: A Memoir of Polygamy, Prophets, and Blood Atonement [New York City: Center Street Books, 2009], 207).

  For many years, the Allred Group considered some of the LeBaron’s to be “crazy idiots.” Over a long period of time, several of them had displayed erratic and insane behaviors. Some of them had been institutionalized.

  In 1956 Joel LeBaron asserted, just prior to his father Dayer LeBaron’s death, his father blessed him with the mantle of leadership. Therefore, he began to establish his own church, which he called The Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. He maintained his father, Dayer, had received his authority from Benjamin F. Johnson, Joseph Smith’s adopted son, who received his calling directly from Joseph Smith. It didn’t take long for Joel to establish a group of converts and followers. He declared, within a twenty-year period, his clan would be holy and righteous enough Jesus Christ would return to the earth and reside with His flock of like-minded worshipers.

  However as time went on, Joel’s older brother, Ervil, used his authority as patriarch to justify his madness. He felt like a peon when his brother, Joel, gave him directions or told him what to do; and resented the love and attention parishioners gave his younger brother, which Ervil deemed should justly be his. In order to warrant his numerous outlandish and evil deeds, Ervil began to twist and use many of the early Mormon teachings that had since been rejected by the LDS Church.

 
; Ervil stole and slept with other men’s wives. In the name of God he molested, badgered, and coerced young girls to marry him. He borrowed money on the no-return plan; abused, abandoned, and discarded older wives; and demanded his followers support his luxurious lifestyle.

  In 1971, after Joel excommunicated Ervil and his loyal patriot, Dan Jordan, from The Church of the Firstborn, Ervil began his own church—The Church of the Lamb of God.

  The more Ervil read about the avenging angels, the Danites, in LDS Church history, the more grandiose he became. Before long, he aggressively took over the LeBaron ranch, homes, church building, and storehouse. Anything he wanted, he took. Ervil began to wield his sword of wrath by initiating a one-sided religious war with his brother’s congregation. Anyone who wouldn’t comply with Ervil’s demands or got in his way would be exiled or put to death. In August 1972, Evil Ervil ordered the murder of his brother Joel. His henchmen shot Joel twice in the head, execution style.

  At a sacrament meeting one Sunday afternoon in December 1975, Uncle Rulon warned his congregation, Ervil LeBaron had delivered more death threats to him and his first counselor, my father, calling them to repent and follow Ervil’s demands or be killed. While we sat in shock and fear, Uncle Rulon read excerpts from the most recent letter he’d received from Ervil. In one of these excerpts, Ervil declared,

  “It is a criminal offense punishable by death for an enlightened people to pay tithes and offerings to thieves and robbers.”

  “By this,” Uncle Rulon told us, “Ervil means me, Owen, and possibly the brethren on my council. Ervil is commanding us to force you, my brothers and sisters, to pay all of your tithing to him.”

  Those of us who knew Uncle Rulon’s humor were sure he was trying to display a little sarcasm in the midst of our grave concerns.

  “He expects your total allegiance. It is your choice, my brothers and sisters.” Uncle Rulon smiled. “If you would like to, please feel free to do so.”

  I assumed like me, everyone was thinking, “Who does Ervil think he is to really think anyone would do that? What an idiotic, senseless man!” The whole assembly snickered out loud, and Uncle Rulon read on:

  “‘The sword of vengeance will hang over the heads of those who should fail to hear the word of the Lord. Willful failure to comply with these requirements is in rebellion against God. Repent ye therefore or suffer destruction at the hand of God!’”

  We listened intently as Uncle Rulon informed us that several members of his large family and The Group wanted him to go into hiding again. Then he boldly stated, “I told them I won’t do that. If it is my time to die, then so be it!”

  My father had the same attitude. Several of his sons began to hang close by, at least as much as they could. It was pretty hard to keep up with our dad. At first most of us didn’t believe Evil Ervil was gutsy or crazy enough to send someone to Salt Lake to go through with something so horrendous. We hoped his threats were nothing but a bunch of hot air. But it wasn’t so. The facts were proving otherwise as we received ongoing accounts of his daughter and other disenchanted friends’ or family members’ murders.

  CHAPTER 20

  Plural Wives and

  Death in Childbirth

  1975–1976

  From the foundation to the final inspection, I thrilled at the house taking shape in our front yard right before my eyes. I felt like the most blessed woman in the world. In January 1975, we celebrated our move from our chicken coop into our new home. I couldn’t help but pace from room to room and stare.

  Every month I skimped on groceries and fixed more chili, rice, and macaroni so I’d have money for fabric. One month at a time, each window in our new home was adorned with my home-sewn curtains. I asked my sister-in-law to get me a few extra housekeeping jobs, and the two of us traded babysitting. With the extra money, I ordered professionally made curtains for our family room, which for Mark and me were expensive. With wood scraps Mark brought home from his jobs, I built and stained a frame for the boys’ window, and matching picture frames for their photos. The dark oak stained frames accented the frogs on the boy’s darling marshland bedspreads and curtains.

  The next few months, after teaching school Monday through Wednesday and cleaning four to five houses on Thursdays and Fridays, I took an evening woodshop class at Jordan High School. With the help of the talented instructor, I designed and lathed eight- 4-by-4’s and then stained them to match the boys’ window and picture frames. With Mark’s help I bolted them to two twin-size bed frames, and used second-hand springs and mattresses for the beds. Jake and Alan’s rustic-looking bunk beds were durable enough to outlast their childhoods and possibly twenty more. I was pretty proud of myself, though I wasn’t supposed to be.

  Once in a while, the boys and I tagged along with Mark over to Kenneth’s house. We’d hang out there while they looked at house plans for Mark’s next masonry jobs. Since they had become pretty good friends, we were sometimes invited to dinner or other outings with them.

  In the middle of Utah Lake, Mark and Kenneth fished off the side of the boat, while Diane and I visited and laughed. We mused over the fun times we had at girls’ camp the previous year. Her occasional glances and smiles in Mark’s direction made it obvious she was still interested in him.

  “I know,” Mark said, when I told him how she looked at him. “She’s liked me ever since I started dating Valerie ten years ago. I’m sure that’s why Kenneth has me come over there to work and why we’ve been invited to join them so often lately.”

  “She has a lot in common with you.” I replied. “Both of you like country-western music, and she knows all of the songwriters and singers. Both of you have great singing voices. Besides being cute and talented, she is really nice and she’s related to me.” I grinned.

  “I’m not interested in her, and that wouldn’t be fair to her.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just not that attracted to her, I guess.”

  “The inside of someone is more valuable to a relationship than one’s appearance is,” I said.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right. We’ll see what happens,” Mark replied.

  As she had before when we lived in West Valley, Diane began to come over quite a bit to hang out with us. Now and then Mark participated, but most of the conversations and activities involved only Diane and me.

  It was still too hard for me to sit still for anything, even visiting; besides, there was always so much to be done. She’d visit with me while I cleaned, canned fruit, folded laundry, and performed a hundred other tasks. More often than not, Mark would go in our bedroom and shut the door, or leave the house. I could see the sadness in Diane’s eyes as she again sensed his distance. It hurt me as well. She was a beautiful person, and I couldn’t think of any girl I’d rather have as a sister-wife.

  Diane gave up on Mark again. Later, Kenneth told him she’d married another young man as a second wife. I felt sad for Diane, left out, disappointed, and frustrated with Mark. We were still monogamists!

  Because I knew Diane loved Mark, I supposed her unfortunate marriage happened on the rebound. Later, we found out she’d married into a “wayward and wacky” family. Dad told me he was worried for Diane because her husband upheld his father, who had gone off the beaten path. According to Dad and others, Diane’s father-in-law was performing outlandish rituals—beating and hypnotizing a “disobedient” wife, and probably doing many more “wicked” and inappropriate things.

  I thought of Diane often, hoping the reason Dad saw things that way, was just because he was so busy with his own life he didn’t really understand or have the whole picture. I wanted his stories to be unfounded so Diane could be happy.

  By then, three more women close to Aunt Amelia’s age, and two women near Dad’s age, had married him. Excluding Aunt Maryann, who’d left him, Dad had nine wives and several more children to claim and help rear. He was so busy building his new homes in Bluffdale, unless his family members were working with him, most of them only saw him
at church.

  *****

  Alan was three and a half years old before I finally decided to ask a doctor about my infertility. In his medical office, Uncle Rulon told me couples often try too hard to get pregnant, and that alone could cause infertility. His simple and surprising advice was to abstain from sex for two months. Then we needed to wait until I ovulated between the third and fourth months to be together. “I’m sure you’ll conceive then. If that doesn’t work,” Uncle Rulon said, smiling, “we’ll go from there.”

  We were so anxious to be pregnant again we followed his guidelines explicitly. In November and December I missed my periods. Mark was right. God hadn’t cursed us for using birth control after all. We took our soon-to-be big brothers to dinner and a movie to celebrate.

  Our front acre of land was still full of junk. The three dump-truck loads that left the yard made as much difference against the remaining rubbish as wiping a flyspeck off a screen door. None of that mattered then. I was still in a glorious mood. I had space and privacy galore in our beautiful home, and another baby on the way.

  *****

  Gorgeous Carla worked at one of Kenneth’s partner’s offices in Murray, as well as with me as a part-time assistant while I taught second grade at our private school. Every chance Mark got, he talked and flirted with her. She’d flip her long black hair across her shoulders and flash her big brown eyes whenever she looked at him and other men. Before long, Mark began attending meetings with me on a regular basis. Even though he denied it, I was sure it was so he could visit with her before, during and after the meetings.