11: At Four O’Clock

manifesto of irvill Le Baron. Coult wasn't even a word reknew of. And we call ourselves the mafia. Right, So the mafia breaks apart. One team goes against the other team. Heber felt he had screwed up so bad. He gave the authority to next brother in line, Aaron. This is

God's law, we have to do it. There were some threats made against Dan Jordan's What of our lifelong dreams was to get our siblings who were under Dan's spell an Dan goes off to do his business, drops his drawers, and two people walk up and shoe in their head in the chest of the nine millimeter weapon. No one seemed phase that a murder had occard. And my afterthought on that is, I mean, murder was sort of a of a natural thing with these folks, and different people

would pray. We had this thing we called a solemn assembly where each person in that circle would say their prayer. I'm just trying to imagine what would the prayers be like. They would be specifically about the killings. Yes, and they were trying to decide location and when where. I just know the feeling of the meeting. It was all like, of course, very ominous. It was June when Lucy finally convinced her dad to let her join him in the

United States. I'm originally from Venezuela. I'm a six daughter of a family of nine. Like so many migrants who uproot their lives to cross borders, Lucy's dad's journey to America wasn't just some grand adventure. My father was struggling economically back in nineteen eighty seven, so he came and left mom and all of us in Venezuela. Ever since he arrived in Houston, Lucy had wanted to join him.

He seemed to have made quick work of securing his steady income, who were so excited when he found a job and he told us that his boss kids and it was a very good man. Lucy was nineteen, and since her dad had settled in America so quickly, she thought why not her too? The time was right for

her to make the trip. I remember asking him all the time, Oh, I want to go send for me, and he was like, no, because she's going to school and and I was like, yeah, but I want to learn English, and so he said, okay, Well, let me think about it. And she didn't have to wait long because her dad's boss had another job, opening a nanny for his four girls. He lost his babysitter and he needed to find a sater to watch them. When he was at work at the appliance business, he ran, I said,

I'll do it. I'll do it as send for me. And he told me, okay, we'll get your visa ready. So I did. Lucy arrived in the US. It was to be the start of a whirlwind romance. Lucy's boss was a man named Dwayne, recently divorced his wife out of the picture. He ran his business fixing up and selling appliances in Houston with help from his mother and a couple of employees, including Lucy's dad. He'd set it up when he moved to the Houston area in and by this point in business was booming. That's why he

needed and could afford help with his children. But those kids with a busy single dad, they needed more than a babysitter. I just became any medium mom to four of his gets four girls. The more time Lucy spent with Dwayne, the more she found things about him that she liked. He was introvert, but once you get to know him, he had such a assist a humor, and

he was awesome. Dad loved loved his girls so much, and he was just amazing, really handsome, So it was not hard for me to fall for somebody like back. He was like my friends. Shortly after Lucy turned twenty, she was out with Duyne on a job to pick up a washing machine. We're driving and he said, would

you marry me? And I was like yes. Given the speed of their romance, Lucy hadn't had time to learn much about Joanne's background, but she was already so close to his kids, and she met his mom, Tholma, who helped out sometimes running the family business. Once they were married, Dwayne began opening up more about his life, his past, introducing lou See two more of his family members and some of his friends. On our honeymoon, we did take a little few days off and on a honeymoon and

we went to the Hill Country. We met his sister and her family, Ria Rina China, Joyne's sister. She was super nice, super sweet to me, and we immediately just you know, had a connection and we were a sweet And then months later I met Mark marchin Off, Joyne's brother, and then I met ed one day in Dallas. This was Joyne's best friend, Eddie Marston, met him and his girlfriend and even went to a Dallas Cowboy game. His son an awesome person, Thelma, Eddie Marston, Mark and Riena

chanof the significan people in Joyne's life. But when it came to actual details about his past, remember him showing me a book of Moment and telling me a little bit about, you know, the story behind the Book of Moment. But he really wouldn't want any religion in his life. I didn't know why he said to me that, you know, past his past, he really wanted to put that past behind. So it was something He really didn't even want to bring up remember or anything like that. He just he

was done with that. You know, I don't blame him because he drew it as a dark part of his life, So I don't blame him. I just feel like I didn't want that to be if something that got in between us little He knew what was going to happen, and he wanted to start a new life and you know, forget. And I don't blame Jayne either, at least when it comes to wanting to forget his past. He was just nine years old when his family converted into Evil's Church.

Just like his sister Rena and his brother Mark, he had little choice about entering into it. His parents, Thelma and Bud, made that decision for their kids. Joyne was seventeen years old when he and his brother Mark and his best friend Eddie attacked Los Molino's indiscriminately shooting residents as they ran from their burning homes and terror. I

can imagine they'd want to forget that night. Or when Dwayne was just eighteen and he strangled to death the pregnant Becky LeBaron holding the ligature together with nineteen year old Eddie and leaving Becky LeBaron's body in an unmarked grave in the forest. I'd want to forget all that. I often wish I'd never learned about it. But when I try to picture Eddie Marston, March Sanath, and Duyne Shana,

I don't know. Did they actually believe they could simply move on, that their cult life was now behind them when they abandoned Hervill's church as he sat in a prison cell in and they walked toward new lives in Texas, Or did they really, in their heart of hearts no, that this wasn't over, that it would all come tearing

back into their lives eventually. Because if they did, if they had even the smallest inkling that any of the things they did in the name of Hervil le Baron might come back to haunt them, then surely they would have thought about the people who might get caught up in their past, those who surrounded them in their new lives, the people they loved, like Lucy or Joyne's kids, who all had absolutely no idea about the lives they lived out.

Just a decade before, Eddie Marston and Mark and Dwayne Shannath had belonged to a cult that would never let them go. Their names were written in the Book of the New Covenant, and one day their past would eventually track them down. From the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this is deliver Us from Herville, episode eleven at four o'clock. If there was one thing that brought Dwayne and Lucy together so quickly, it was the kids. The children were the reason they met, of course, but

it was more than that. He was a very family oriented person and so was I. So that was kind of like a bond we had. The kids were a shared priority, and they both adored them. Really awesome, awesome kids. They had door their dad, and you know, they spent a lot of time with him. Lucy came to love all the kids. They were just good and sweet and full of energy, and it was just so nice and

loving and it was a very positive experience. But some needed her attention more than others, as actially little Jenny, Jenny, she was just she got teased a lot from her brother's you know, typical siblings, but she she was just so loving and even though they got into little fight and arguments, she always just loved them let them back no matter what. She was sweet, adorable girl. Um, she's just, you know, a typical eight year old, curious and excited

about life. June was a nice summer day in Houston, not too hot. That morning, the phone rang at Dwayne China's appliance repair shop. Joyne was out on a delivery, so his mother, Thelma picked up. The caller identified himself as Terry Phillips. He was moving from Houston and had a used washer he wanted to sell. Thelma wrote down the name and address. Did it seem strange to Thelma that the address was on Rena Street, the same name

as her daughter? Maybe? Maybe not? Either way, she told Mr Phillips her son Dwayne would come and pick the washer up later that afternoon. Would he need help with the machine? No, it was fine, He'd handle it alone. The price offered for the machine was just seventy It was low, suspiciously low in retrospect. Had Thelma called back to check if that price was actually right, the number would have rung and rung. The call had come from a pay phone at a gas station. There was no

Terry Phillips. At some point after hanging up, who ever had made the call had glued the phone's receiver to the cradle so no one could pick it up, just in case someone did call back to talk to Mr Terry Phillips. At around the same time, five miles north, the phone rang at Ed's Appliances and Irving, a suburb just west of Dallas. A guy on the line named Perry Wilson said he wanted to sell a used washer. Eddie Marston agreed on a price and wrote down the

name and number and time to pick it up. If he would have called back, the phone would have rang and rang, because again there was no Perry Wilson. The call had been made from a pay phone at a convenience store, and now it's receiver was also super glued to the cradle. That afternoon, back in Houston, Mark China was kicking back in an office chair at the business he ran Reliance Appliances. You guessed it washers and dryers,

the family trade. I picture him with his feet up on the desk because he waited for customers or for the phone to ring. And I wonder did he hear the tires on the asphalt outside or the car pulling up to the storefront. Did he glimpse the outlines, the figures outside the shop window the profiles of three of hervill La Baron's children, as they sat inside the approaching car in their disguises. Meanwhile, a fifteen minute drive across town, Dwayne Shannath was about to get in his truck to

collect the cheap washer and dryer. He was supposed to go alone, but there was a last minute change of plans. Jenny was struggling with her reading. The teacher said that she needed to practice for reading, so he would take her. Will leave me with the other kids at the store and would take her with him so she could read to him while he's working and she could practice her reading. And that's what happened that day. A little before four pm, Dwayne and Jenny got in the truck and set off

for Arena Street. Lucy would never see either of them again. Standing on Rena Street, about twenty miles from downtown Houston, the first thing you notice is how normal the area is. There's a suburban tranquility to it, well tended lawns, there's an American flag waving at a house across the street, some pumpkins left over from Halloween, big magnolia trees. It's a solidly middle class neighborhood, and considering what happened here, there's sort of an eerie quality to it, just how

placid and calm it is. Monday, jun the three bedroom brick house in front of me was vacant today. It's an odd house on this street. It sort of stands out for how it has an unkempt kind of wild feel. At just before four o'clock, Duyne Schinov pulled up to that house on Rena Street, but no one seemed to be home. If Jayne had got out and asked a neighbor, they would have told him the house had been empty for a year. There had been a four cell sign

up until earlier that day. Someone had moved it that morning. Duyne wanted to get back home and was just backing up the driveway to leave when a black Silverado truck came barreling down the street, blocking Duane in the truck driver had short blonde hair. In the passenger seat sat someone in a business suit with a strawberry blonde beard. The person in the business suit got out of the truck, Dwayne stepped from the cab of his GMC pick up.

They exchanged a few brief words and then the man in the business suit pulled a three fifty seven magnum from a shoulder holster beneath his suit coat. He then looked up into the cab and noticed the little girl. It was four o'clock. Back across town at Reliance Appliances, Mark Snath was still sitting in that swivel chair at his desk, but now he had bullet holes across his face and chest, and as spreading pool of blood at his feet. He had just been shot at four o'clock

to seconds before. In Dallas, Eddie Marston had been backing his pickup into the driveway of a home on the west side of town when a dark pickup blocked him in. A gunman emerged, shooting Eddie in the head and chest four o'clock. Within just four minutes of each other, four people were dead, all glory to the Kingdom of God. More after the break, we are in Huntsville, which is roughly an hour in twenty minutes north of Houston, through a pretty wooded green part of Texas, sort of forested

tall trees. We are on our way to meet with retired detective John Burmeister. John, are you doing, Jesse? How are you I'm gonna expected you. I like how the horses they are able to just wander around the yard. That's nice. Ship everywhere. Shut up, doll. We're an hour roughly from downtown to Houston, but it feels like a world away. Cowboy hats the gas station pasture horseship. John Burmeister spent twenty five years as a Houston homicide detective.

We can gather up some volun chambers and sit in the sun. How it sounds great. We're doing the interview outside in his front yard to not disturb his wife, who was inside sick the day we arrive. Occasionally a farm truck passes by at the end of his driveway. John is a large man, big broad shoulders, big hands, white hair, and the way he looks at you, you immediately get the sense this is a man not to be fucked with. Kind of looks like Santa gone bad.

In the nineteen eighties, when John was working homicides, Houston was booming. It was a pretty busy time for us. We were probably having about five hundred plus homicides a year. I was on the evening shift. All has had been and uh, the evening shift comes in. It's toward the midnight, and you basically if a scene comes in, if there's a homicide, the patrol unit that gets the initial call figures out, yeah, we need to do some investigating on this one, and they call the office and the supervisor

decides who's going out. Un John remembers he was working the night shift. He had just got in and was doing some paperwork when he got the call. We had no idea what we were. Well, we were getting to there's two scenes dropped at the same time, and uh that this lieutenant got the word that the two might be related. My partner and I went out on one and another team went out on the other. John was headed to Arena Street. His lieutenant didn't tell him much.

The suspects were unknown. When John arrived at the scene, crowds had already gathered. Cops had roped off the crime scene with yellow tape. Yeah, the streets were failed with lookers, you know, nosy folks. It was kind of chaotic. There was a lot of blue suits, a lot of uniforms offers there. There wasn't much of a scene to be preserved, and uh, the officers that made the original call were doing the best they could to preach or of what that was. But everything was kind of within ten foot

of the pickup truck standing on Rena Street. John walked over to get a closer look at the truck piece together what might have happened. I'll warn you this next piece of tape is very hard to listen. To skip ahead about a minute and a half if you'd rather not listen. The first thing I know, there was a blood leaking out of the truck, and uh, I walked to the passenger side, and I remember a little girl

being slumped over in the front seat. And it was afternoon and the the sun wasn't high up in the sky, and the light was shining through the truck. The sunlight was shining through the truck, and uh, you could actually see light coming through the little girl's skull from the entrance to the exit. And that was that was the serious thing I've seen all my life. And it just it just was kind of an emotional moment there for

a little while. What did you feel in that moment? Well, I thought about my little girls, and uh, you know, keep thinking who would do something like that? And I never could believe that somebody would actually target a little girl like that. Moving away from the crime scene, John approached some of the first responding officers, had his notebook out.

The investigation had begun. The officers told us that there were no actual witnesses to a shooter, but there were some people that heard the gunshots and came out and saw some people getting into I think it was a truck and leave. Neighbors told the detectives they'd seen a black Silverado truck cruising the street all day leading up to the shooting, and uh, we got kind of a description, but it wasn't anything unusual, you know. It was a guy in a suit with a beard, which really didn't

tell us a whole lot. And it turned out that the other scene and went on Blaylock was directly related because it's the same family and they were actually brothers. Blaylock that John's referring to here is Blaylock Road. It's a boulevard about ten miles west of downtown Houston. It's where Mark Chinath ran his shop, Reliance Appliances. An hour later, as John and his partner were arriving back at the police station, they learned that Mark had been shot there.

The office was full of people and well I confirmed that it was a hit and that it was kind of hard to understand what it was all about. It first, as John and his team prepared themselves for the investigation, some of his colleagues were already with the victims families. The first time Dwayne's wife Lucy since something wasn't right was around five PM. More than an hour had passed since Dwayne and little Jenny had left the house together. I'm going to call him, but he's not answering. He's

not up, So I started calling. No answer, you know, and so we probably that he was busy, me know, outside the truck and couldn't hear the phone. Then her phone did ring, but it was a friend of Dwayne's. I noticed something was strange because his friend called very worried. This friend had just heard the news about March not getting shot, so he was trying to prevent for warm Wayne. About was just stick took place and we couldn't get a hold of them. A couple of hours passed nothing.

I'm still trying to put the bottle together with what's going on. So about an hour or two, the police come in and they tell us that that both of them where We're dead. Okay, as I was still trying to gather and you know, come to terms with the news they just told me. I just I couldn't believe it. To me, it was just surreal. It's like, no, you could this is gonna be true? You know, just how can this happen? And it just all came tumbling down.

But it was just it was so shocking. It took to gus, you know, they used to come with grips with it and who did it and why, and that's when his past just came to the surface. That's coming up. After the break. As police started to piece together the motive behind the four o'clock murders, he told some of the chinnav family that they wanted to take them into protective custody for a few days. Rina Channath seemed the

most at risk. Two of her brothers had now been murdered, one of them on a street that shared her name. Worst of all, she had been named in hervil's Book of the New Covenant too, and that meant execution. She agreed to the protection initially, but then she went home. She figured that if the Kingdom of God wanted her dead, they would have killed her when they killed Mark and Dwayne and Eddie Marston, but Rena did skip the funeral. Security missures they did not want her at the funeral

because they have done that before. When Lucy says done that before, she's talking about using a funeral as a lure for further killings. This lure was the Colts plan back in nineteen seventy seven with the aborted assassination attempt on Hervil's brother Verlin. The police now knew about that connection, so when it came to this funeral, they weren't taking any chances. The funeral had been delayed so it could take place on a Saturday. That way, off duty officers

could be called in for extra security. That day was a very very sad day for all of us, and I remember they sat down one of the main freeways, I ten, which is super busy, it's an interstate. They

shut that down and security was really high. Over fifty officers, including FBI agents, detectives, uniformed officers, and a SWAT team armed with automatic rifles, surrounded the chapel at the Wall Trip Funeral Home in Houston, inside the pastor of the Church of Odd where Mark had played the Oregon and driven the school bus for Sunday school stood before the

one mourners in a bulletproof vest. Three coffins of gloss dark wood, and one tiny pink coffin stood in front of the congregation Before they could be wheeled outside for the ten mile trip to their final resting place. A police dog sniffed its way around the limousines and all four horses, searching for bombs. As the caskets were lifted from the hearses police found out, creating a defensive perimeter

in the surrounding trees and tombstones. Not long after the funeral, Rena and her mother Thelma did agree to go into protective custody, but that didn't mean they would live their lives in hiding. In fact, kind of the opposite. It was around this time time that Rena started telling her story to the writer Dean Shapiro for her tell All book, where she confessed to killing Roulin Alred. The recordings you heard in episode five. Interesting timing, and Rena wasn't done there,

nor was Thelma. After that. She you know, the police, she talked to them, you know, so did Rena. They were probably the ones that talked the most to the police. Because of because of all the information they knew and all the time. These former cult members were doing this more than a thousand miles away in Sonora, Mexico. In that base, they called b f A the current incarnation of Hervil's Cult, the Kingdom of God. We're starting to absorb the impact of the four o'clock murders. In the

immediate aftermath, they waited for news. When something very serious is going on, we would do those kind of heavy loaded prayers. So that was the spirit that we were in in b f A. In support of the four o'clock murders happening in the States. The group had planned the whole hit together, not just the targets, but the precise timing of the executions. We knew that if one of the people got killed, then everybody would go in hiding, so they had to target all people at once, and

that's why the four clock wonders happened. The killers had to strike in unison choreographic perfectly, with the kind of precision military's aspired to, and they had except well, not quite because later when the news of the killings finally did reach down across the border through Chihuahua and across Sonora to Navajo. The cold we're learning of that fourth

unplanned murder, Jenny. The assassins had made a mistake. There was no contingency plan for that situation, and it was a horrific like spur of the moment, what the hell do you do? And we never could have any witnesses, um, And I know this is I hate I know this is all public knowledge now, but I hate to talk about it, um, But I do know that it was. It was terrible, and we never thought of that possibility, and like, what the hell would you do with that happened?

You know, in that situation, in a situation where there was a possible witness, this was not vengeance. Without the Book of the New Covenant for guidance, the four o'clock Assassin's had to improvise those who participated in the four o'clock murders. Had they killed before? I think only the um youngest one, I think that was his first time. The youngest one that day was seventeen year old Richard LeBaron. Richard was a He was overall fun, overall laid back.

He was I don't know. He never was one of the authorities. Never he worked really hard. They made him work really hard. He learned how to shoot guns and he would stay up on guard all night. But he would make jokes out of everything. He was ready to crack a joke and turn everything into a joke. I liked Richard and that he was just fun. He was never violent, He was never mean. He was one of the easy going you know, never part of the patriarchy drama. Are you know none of that? He was always one

of the kind of happy go lucky personality. It was the happy go lucky Richard who shot and killed eight year old Jenny, but the cops wouldn't find that out for years to come. Did you notice any kind of a change after that with those who participated? I mean, when there would be a mission like that, did that harden those who participated in some of these killings? The hardened part happened so long before that, and there are killings already of people much closer to us, so that

that part was much more difficult. Um, we had to be prepared to kill the people we loved the most, and that was the only way to save their souls. They would be thankful to us in the end, because otherwise they woul go to hell forever over our cowardice. You have to love them so much that you have to kill them so that they don't suffer forever, and stealing ourselves for that reality made everything else. There was

nothing else that was even remotely and severe. Do you remember who introduced you to the idea of what that was? One of the things that we were, you know, from the crib growing up, we always knew basically, I don't know, how do you feel about that concept today? It's horrific? Are you kidding? But it makes me understand. I understand what it's like to live in a terrorist organization, and like I understand how mothers who strapped bombs to their

children feel. You know, it's the most horrific thing you could imagine, but you think you're doing it for a higher good. It's it's it's terrible. It's yeah, it's like satanic horrific. Despite Gabriella saying that the four o'clock killings didn't further harden the group from an outside perspective, at least it definitely changed them change their trajectory from that path set in motion a generation before. Ever since Herville

had his own brother Joel killed by his followers. The four o'clock murders reignited a nationwide hunt for the colt, re energizing that federal investigation that had started with Dan Jordan's killing. The FBI cops and prosecutors, working with Detective Dick Forbes, now with a new determination that surpassed anything that had come before, a fresh focus and energy and

new informants. They leaned on all their sources, put former cult members like Thelma and Na Channath in front of a grand jury, extracted any useful information they could get. They would name this new operation after the child, the Jenny Task Force. They were going to pursue this new generation of hervil Abearance cult like never before, But investigators were still going to need some luck and a kind

of crucial break. Journalist del van Ada had laid out to Detective Dick Forbes all those years ago, back when they were first uncovering the full extent of Herbal's Colt. They were going to need to turn someone on the inside. Members of the Kog itself were going to need to crack. Well. I had happened just before Christmas. She called Forbes. Forbes called us, and she wanted to meet us a couple of days later, Laura after Christmas. We uh, we moved.

We had it when they came forward. That's all it took. That's coming up in episode twelve of deliver Us from Herba. Deliver Us from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written and reported by me Leona Hamid and David Waters. Production 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 Shari Houston, Frankie Taylor and Charlotte Wolfe. Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor. Gavin Haynes is our head of Development. Willard Foxton is our creative director of Development. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music 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, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the team at U t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot audio