2: The Massacre in Los Molinos

One of the dictims of that cult was if you ever left, you would be killed. Non's if some butts about it. My brother says that he heard noises and discussions and then all of the sudden, some shots they killed him. The actual killing of my dad and brutal, cold blah. They kill him right here. On the twentie Fagasteen seventy two August nineteen seventy two, the Mormon fundamentalists of Colonial LeBaron are gathered at an airstrip in the desert of Chihuahua. The sky is lit up by bright moonlight.

They're waiting for the body of their fallen prophet, Joel LeBaron, the One Mighty and strong murdered in an ambush in a town on the Baja coast of Mexico by disciples of his brother Herbal Murder. We're talking about murder. Naoma Stubbs was in the crowd that night at the airport. Joel died when I was nine years old, and I actually drove in the back of a truck when they brought his casket to The gusts are on this airport, and I remember watching as they landed to bring his

casket home just before midnight. Huge floodlights flick on as the plane descends lands and the doors open. Naoma presses close with the rest of the crowd to see their profits body. A pickup then backs up to the plane. Joel's casket is lifted into the truck bed for his final short trip back to Colonial a Baron. I remember all the men discussing what has to be done to be able to take care of his body and bring

him home. Within days of bearing Joel, the focus of the people of Colonial Aaron turned to Irville and his accomplices. Thanks to Joel's son Ivan identifying the killers, they had no doubts these were the people responsible for the death of Joel. He was our prophet and we all looked up to him and admired. Plus on top of that, now they could murder any of us. Because if Erville could have his own brother killed, the one mighty and strong,

surely no one was safe. He started threatening that he was in a murder people if they didn't do what he said. It was very terrorizing, that terror. It was part of Herbal's plan to intimidate people so they'd fall in line behind him, so they joined his cult. We were always threatened. Nailma's mom, Larivee Stobs. I'm just gonna tell you this. Hervill thought that if he got rid of Joel, that he could just move in and take leadership with Joel's people. Well it didn't work, that's the problem.

So the stage was set in Herbal's mind. At least it was him against the world. From the Team's at Novel and I Heart Radio. I'm Jesse Hyde and this is deliver Us from Hervial Episode two, the Massacre and Los Milinos. It was four when the phone calls started, calls threatening the townsfolk of colonial LeBaron. I remember always being fearful of him because as we were growing up after he had murdered Joel. It was always the fear

of the I'm coming an attack in our town. There was a phone and they would send messages and say they're threatening this or they're threatening that. Up until now, the years since Joel Slang had largely been quiet, and one big reason for that was Hervill had been in

prison following Joel's killing in seventy two. He had slipped across the US border with Dan Jordan's who had killed Joel and some other followers, and they cut a swath across the American South, stayed in cheap motel rooms from Texas to Tennessee, planning, scheming, never in one place for more than a few days. But then, after several months on the run, Herval did something really strange. He turned

himself in. It was a gamble, a huge gamble. Back then, under Mexican law, a prosecutor only had seventy two hours to gather evidence, and if they couldn't find enough for trial, well then he was a freeman. So this sudden move might give him an upper hand. But the gambit failed. He was charged with the murder and sentenced to twelve years in prison in Mexico. That could and should have

been the end of it. But fourteen months later, the appeals court reversed the conviction and Herville was released from prison, an act of God, more likely a bribe to the right official by a member of his cults. Once released from prison in Mexico, he traveled north, back into the US where he could put those fourteen months of brooding and scheming into action. He told his followers of a coming war, and back in colonial le Baron, those menacing

phone calls had started. He tried to scare people into life and death like that, and people were scared so that you had to be careful. Yeah, you did. Local is like larive Stubs were spurred into action. The town erected a watch tower on a hill. One resident even put a siren on his roof. They were taking the threats of violence from Herbyl's cult seriously. Naoma remembers armed townsfolk patrolling the streets looking for anything suspicious. They would

shoot gunshots. So if you would hear those gunshots, you knew that, Okay, everybody needs to take cover because we're under threat. And that would happen all the time. Those nights. We would put our sleeping bags in the weeds and sleep in the ditches because we had threats on our town. You would literally gather up the younger kids, leave the house and then go to a ditch. Yeah, we had a ditch in front of our house. Always had weeds

in it because of the water. And I would always grow of sleeping, bagging, go jumping the ditch because the fear was our roof was made out of wood, and if he would throw a gas bomb on it, well, our home would be in fire and you're going to run out and he would kill us. So if you were in the ditch and you're being quiet and there's weeds, don't never know. They wouldn't go in the ditches? In my mind, how long would you stay in the dish?

Like all night? I remember one night being there all night long and waking up there in the morning time. How often do you remember it happening? I remember, I don't know. I probably went to the ditches nine twelve times. For Naoma. This thing, she feared, this thing. She seemed to almost see residents being drawn out of their homes by bombs and fire, only to be gunned down as

they fled. A lot of people I talked to reporting the story told me a vivid premonitions like this, And if this sounds a bit crazy, I get it, I really do. But here's an important thing to understand. Mormonism is a religion of dreams and visions and prophecies of magic in a way of the veil between heaven and Earth being very thin. All Mormons believe that, whether they're fundamentalists or someone like my parents. But here's the really crazy thing. This vision of violence seen by Naoma, it

turned out to be right more after the break. I grew up in a very devout Mormon family. We were not fundamentalist. We were part of the mainstream church. As a kid, I thought a lot about what I read in scripture, and I think, like a lot of kids raised in devoutly religious homes, be a Catholic, Muslim, evangelical, I thought a lot about sin, and to be honest, I feared it. I feared the judgment of God. Looking back, I've got to admit it probably wasn't healthy how often

I felt guilty. Mormonism teaches that you can be forgiven of pretty much any sin unless you denied the Holy Ghost. Then you become something called a son of perdition. Growing up, I didn't know exactly what that meant. I just knew I didn't want to be one, because a son of perdition gets sent to a unique kind of hell, a place Mormons call outer darkness, And I'll be honest, it terrified me. I pictured like space and some little star off all by itself, cold, alone, forever, no path to redemption.

It freaked me out. I say all of this because when I tried to picture Herville, especially after he killed his brother, when I try to think of him washing the metaphorical blood from his hands, I can't help but think of him as a son of perdition in his own sort of outer darkness. Because Herville had crossed what for me at least is an unimaginable line ordering the slaying of his own brother, and as I see it, it was a demarcation point from which he would never return.

He was cast out from colonial a baron, eden zion home, whatever you want to call it, and the rest of his days would be spent in restless wandering, like Kine after he killed his brother Abel in the Book of Genesis. But if Herville felt a weight a darkness for killing Joel if he felt even a semblance of that guilt and shame I knew as a kid, he didn't show it. The continued threats to Colonial LeBaron demonstrate that he simply

pressed on wandering through the darkness. And it was darkness that was now spreading out from Colonial LeBaron and headed across Mexico, falling across the Baja Coast. We're on Highway of one in Mexico, which starts at the border right after San Diego, and we have been driving in total from the border were about three hours. And the highway when you first get outside of Tijuana, it's just stunningly beautiful,

just hugs the ocean. There are hotels right on the beach, then these little Mexican towns, and then the first kind of big town you come to is Rosarita, and then an hour so after that in Sonata. But we are driving toward a town called Los Molina's. If in Colonial Labaron Joel had yearned to create the next kingdom of God on Earth, you might say Los Molinos was heaven spillover. It was one of the major outposts of Colonial l Abaron where Joel and Irville had attracted converts as their

church numbers started to swell. Los Milinos, which means the Windmills in Spanish, is about an hour's drive from where Joel was killed. As you pass down the highway, the beauty of the landscape is unrelenting, the light that haze from the ocean. You pass vineyards where you can stop to drink delicious samples and eat local cheese, and then the town appears across this vast flat plane of land. It's a little more barren and dry than the countryside

you've passed through. In the distance the shore of the Sea of Cortez, and to the north, a steep hillside overlooks Los Milinos. Back when Joel was still alive in the sixties, both he and Herville saw huge potential in the town. I've got to be honest, sometimes, when you're in colonial LeBaron, out in the harsh desert, it's sort of hard to understand why the LeBaron's thoughts such an

inhospitable place would be the best location for Zion. But what you see when you pass along this coastline road towards Los Milinos, well, it's much easier to imagine how the LeBaron saw its promise for Joel and the people who ran his church after his death. The opportunity they saw was for another communal utopia like Colonial LeBaron, but Erville's vision for the town was different. He focused in

on the nine miles of surrounding beachfront property. What Erville imagined was a luxury resort kind of his own Mara Lago. He even lined up investors in the States. He flew them down on a private plane for a tour, and in typical RVIL grandiose fashion, he called it the Baja Yacht Club. I don't know, maybe he thought that was an easier cell than the next Kingdom of God on Earth. Even before Joel's murder, Los Milinos townsfolk had mixed loyalties

between Joel's church and hervil. One. Los Milinos local I met, for instance, Joe Castillo. He was firmly behind Joel and saw him as his prophet. Our prophet said that Los Molinos was a suitable place to come and lift our people. Joe Castillo was one of Joel's earliest converts, so he moved from Central Mexico to Colonial le Baron, then onto Los Milinos. When the keep and when I came here, I saw that it was a much better place for me in regards to the economy, because we had better salaries,

and it was also a better place to develop. That is why we have been here since nineteen sixty six until now. They say. But Hervill was popular in town too, when he made the long trips across Mexico to visit Mama. I remember my mom saying that Ervil really liked Bence and Salta. My mom all aways gave him food. This is another Lost Millinos resident Delhi. She grew up here and when Herville came to town, he would stay in

her parents home. It was a house where they gather to study, to talk, to talk more than anything with my dad. But I remember that my mom used to happily tell me that my dad like Herbal, but he arrived with stuff for my mom. Hervil gifted in machine and Yes, considering the mixed loyalties between Joel and Hervill, it's easy to understand that when Herville had his brother killed, it sent Los Milinos into a state of somewhere between

panic and confusion. The majority of the town continued to follow Joel's church, the Church of the Firstborn, which by nine seventy four was led by a man called Verlin Barnon. Le Baron is as the youngest brother to joln Irville, and he was seven years the younger than yo Joel. A Baron's son Adrian, took me to the spot in Los Milinos where Verlin lived today. It's a small, tumble down one story home, a rusting gate, rusting chain link fence. And the reason we're standing up here because when they

startled about Molinos, he brought his family here. He helped a lot to build this down little Molinos. He had en office here. Verlin he didn't have the Hollywood looks of his brother Herville, and he wasn't like his brother Joel either, really like he never made any kind of claim of revelation to be the one mighty and strong, that person who was chosen to unite the whole Mormon church. There was no seeing angels or hearing God's voice for Verlin.

In fact, you could say he wasn't ambitious for power at all. Yet after Joel's death, he was running the community Herville had sought to control. This sent Herval into a rage, and no sooner had Rlin inherited the leadership of Joel's church. His presence at Los Milinos had put

the whole community squarely in Hervil's crosshairs. Hervill's fourteen months in prison might have given the town some respite, but then in nineteen seventy four he was released, and just like in colonial LeBaron, the town started to receive ultimatums to fall in line under Hervil. Things didn't stop there, because in nineteen seventy four, everyone who didn't want to follow where we started receiving threats. He quoted a passage

in the Bible that talks about destruction. Los Milinos residents like Joe Castillo started to receive handwritten violent threats delivered by his own, well supporting neighbors. But then, just as it seemed inevitable that these threats would turn into actual violence, a strange thing happened. In late nineteen Quietly, without any announcement, those families who had joined Hervil's church, the Church of the Lamb of God, started leaving Los Molinos. They just

quietly packed up their homes and left. The community breathed a collective sigh of relief. We never believed that they were capable of attacking us. They left and we were having a normal life. But in they threw an attack. The attack. It's December seventy four and the moon is bright overhead. It's one of the coldest nights of the year. The town then looked much like it does today. Mostly single story houses, small yards, the occasional garden, all in

a grid system with a church in the center. Basic not unlike a suburb and a small American town. Although the roads are unpaved, the majority of the few hundred villagers that night have turned in. They're huddled around stoves to keep warm. We're already in bed. Just before nine pm, two vehicles approached the town, flick off their headlights as they enter. The first is a brown GMC pickup stolen from the United States. In the back of the truck

are three of Herville's most trusted lieutenants. Close behind in a dark green Fiat driven by another follower, a teenager who will become central to the whole Hervil story. Her name is Rna chinof Tonight. She's a sixteen year old onlooker. In a few months she'll become Hervil's thirteen wife. The cars passed by a house shared by four families, including Joel Aguilar, a local clam fisherman, another one of Joel's early converts. He lives with his parents and two of

his married brothers. He looked through the window that pointed north and said that Virhinias bets Hells was on fire. The tallest structure in Los Milinos was this three story building. Everyone called it the tower House, and Joel Aguilar saw that it was ablaze. Joe Castillo saw the fire too, and like there are other neighbors who saw the tower House burning that night, his first thought was, how can I help you in the moment, it's like that meant I thought it was an accidental fire. I didn't see

anything evil on it. Who were just there with a trust of putting the fire out, thinking it's okay. Things happened, Fires happened, But the tower House fire was no accident. It had been caused by a Molotov cocktail, and shooters were now hiding in the shadows about twenty yards away, their targets standing before them perfectly silhouetted against the burning house.

More after the break, the first fire in Los Milinos that night was under control role in a little more than ten minutes, neighbors had worked together to get the tower House blaze under control, like Joe Castillo and his brother Fernando, who had climbed to an upper floor of the burning house and from there had successfully fought back the flames. But the fire was a trap. On the second floor. When my brother was he suddenly felt a bullet and told me I have been shot, but I don't.

Irville had ordered the fire just to lure out his brother Verlin. Once again, Irvill was trying to kill one of his brothers, and the way he planned it as leader of the community, Verlin surely would come out to join his neighbors in tackling the blaze. The shooters, who were now firing from the shadows, would execute Verlin as

he came running to help. But so far Verlin hadn't shown up, and as the blaze subsided, the shoot as were now at risk of being spotted by men like Joel and Fernando Castillo on the upper floors of the tower House. Before they could lose the element of surprise, they opened fire. But that's when I realized how dangerous this was, so I grabbed my brother and jumped from the second floor into a pile of sand. Joe Castillo's brother landed on the floor bleeding. So I pulled my

brother close. He could still walk a little, and as I took him, I told him stay here. At that instant, I got shut in my hand and my mano. Now both men had been wounded. Joe Castillo moved his brother to a sheltered spot as he tried to process exactly what was going on. He told him, good, you stay here, because something is happening. It started to dawn on Joel Castillo that this was a trap. But who were these attackers he now saw coming from the shadows, their faces

seemingly distorted, partially obscured by some kind of cloth like mask. Then, as shooters moved away from the shadows, the townsfolks started to make out facial features, some were alarmingly familiar. Los Milano's resident Deli can remember her sister's shocked as she realized she recognized an attacker. And she looked at him and so it was her friend, the friend that almost became her boyfriend. This was someone she had been to school with, sat with him in class. She saw his eyes.

He was completely covert, and she saw his eyes and recognized him, and he turned and saw her and ran away. Other townsfolk were coming to the same awful realization. Not only were they under attack, but the assailants were the children of their former neighbors. Most of the attackings were kids. Joelah Baron's son Adrian, took me to the place where this all happened. And the kids that Adrian is talking about,

they were teenagers from the town. It's amazing how children are not turtem fourteen, fifteen, sixty and eighteen year old can be swam to the opposite side so easy doing the attack. They're in a thank your spot of life, so you see, convinced of something else. And those are

the people that Irvil somehow brainwashed. It was powerful. As the teenagers attacking Los Milinos realized Berlin wasn't going to come out to fight the fire, they switched to their next phase of the assault, basically an all out attack. These teenagers started firing randomly at the panicking crowd. One attacker moved towards a wounded sixteen year old boy, a boy named Maronai Mendez. Marona I was on the ground moaning and crying, and this attacker stood over Maronai and

shot him in the chest. Now the attackers left the burning tower house and headed towards Verlin's home. Joe Castillo, who had been shot in the hand, had made it back to his house. From there, he could see that the attackers had split into two groups, one moving through the town on foot, the other by car, both sets randomly firing into residence homes. They were shooting house by house,

and so I panicked. I didn't even tell my wife I was hurt, but I did tell her it was you know what, going look for a place to hide up there with the trees. Are go over there and hide because we are being attacked by as people. The teenagers weren't just randomly firing at people. They were now also throwing these handmade bombs at the houses. They'd shoot at the people fleeing their burning buildings. One group of attackers arrived at clam Fisherman Joe Aguilar's Houseman went and

looked through the window. He went towards the window and at the moment he opened the curtain and look, he got shot. He got shot in the head. And then a molot of bomb was thrown through the same window, but the same weekd men. That bomb was made out of petrollum base and I had a week inside a bottle. And the moment the bullet and the bomb were at the same time, the bullet hit him in his head and the bomb lit and fell on him, setting his

body on fire. And to say, my brother. Then as I wake up, he fell to the floor with a bullet in his head while being on fire, and my dad then took a bedsheet and tried to put out my brother's body. We then woke up and my mom tried to hug it, but he had a lot of pain and kept rolling from one way to another. My mom cried, we all cried. He was in so much pain.

The attackers arrived at Virlin's home. Here they threw nearly a dozen Molotov cocktails on the roof, fired round after round through the windows, but Verlin still didn't emerge, and that is because, unknown to the attackers, he wasn't anywhere near the town that night. He had fled to Honduras,

leaving days before the attack. Seeing one brother already slain by Herval's colt was enough to convince him to take Hervil's recent threat to the town more seriously, but he left behind his wife, Charlotte and their small kids, as well as his congregation, and now his family were following the same procedure rehearsed by residents of Colonial le Baron, hiding in the town's ditches just yards away from their burning home, and other families and Los Milinos were now

also hiding their small children from the onslaught as the attackers continued their seemingly random assaults on different houses. But my husband, and he was wounded. He just didn't show me anything. He then manned at his rifle and grabbed it with his own injured hand. No, no, he only said to me, go out back, take the kids and hide.

They are killing people out there. Joe Castilla's wife, Julia Cardoba, had hoped she could wait out the onslaught, but now looking out from her window, she clearly saw other homes going up in flames. So I left and hit. There was a beautiful bride moon. It almost felt like daylight. I went to hide. I had my three kids and I was pregnant. I told the kids to hold on to me as I grabbed the youngest one to live. It was December, it was very cold. I gave a

blanket to my oldest sons and we left. I let them down, and I told him it looks like someone is burning the houses over looked in at the houses from where we were in cases at our house on fire. Stay here, I told my four year old victor, to which he replied, yes. Mommies hiding in the flickering shadows of their burning home. The community of Los Milinos waited in sheer terror for what would come next. But by

ten pm the raid was over. The attackers fled along that same highway I had driven into town on, rejoining their families and Hervil's colts. Meanwhile, in Los Milinos, the people gathered the wounded. Joel Aguilar remembers four women and eleven men ranging an age from sixteen to seventy eight years old, had been shot. They were taken to a local hospital. The most of your cases where my brother with a bullet in his head, and another young man

whose name was Moronimendous. They were there for three days. After three days, my brother ed Mundo died around one pm, and Moroney around three pm. The nursessor said it was a beautiful day. The son suddenly came out of the clouds, but the clouds came back, and then it rained. The earth shook, and then a peace, but later on tiered shook again. We're standing on a hill above Los Molina's or is there, as they called today, standing here at

and down. When I visited Los Milinos to see for myself the side of the attack, I ended up on the hill, the one that overlooks the town. Where we stand you can see all the way. Thought it was on the same hill in nineteen seventy two, just before he had ordered his brother dead, that Irville had pretty much laid out his entire plan to one resident, a man named Fernando Castro. He was Deli's dad, Delhi, whose mom RVIL would give gifts to whenever he visited town.

On this hill, Rvill had told Fernando Castro about both his desire to kill his brother and to take control of Los Milinos. He offered him a role in his cult in exchange for his loyalty and help, but Fernando wasn't interested, or maybe he just couldn't comprehend that Ervil would actually do all this. Anyway, Now I'm back at that very spot, looking out over the same view of Los Milinos with Fernando's daughter Deli. I'm also with Adrian. He's the son of Joelo Baron and the nephew of Herville.

Today Delhi and Adrian are married. Delhi is one of Adrian's three wives. She points down to the town below us and tells me about what life was like for the community in the aftermath of the attack. The people who lived here were still unsure whether Irvill's court would return with more violence and destruction, and maybe that in my life and mine, the sound of the ocean still connects to what happened that day. The ocean reminds me

of the massacre. But that's what we say. Where those two pounctories are is where the whole town went to hide that night to sleep. We were scared, and we were told that you cannot sleep at your home. You have to go and spend the night at the houses that are further away. Up here, at the top of the hill, I can see brown earth and the charred

remains of buildings below me. In total, twenty four homes had been firebombed that day, twenty four several were completely gutted, and to be frank it seems like in some ways, this town hasn't really been able to move on much from what happened that night. There never has been any justice for what happened in the Los Milinos massacre, not

that day, not ever. Two residents, one of them just a teenage boy, were dead, and the dreams this community had for a communal utopia, for prosperity even today, that is still their struggle. But Herville's followers cowardly attack on their own town seems to have stopped Los Milinos in its tracks. Then, as Delhi and I continue to talk, she says something that catches me off guard. I still love Hervilly because Hervil is responsible for my mom and

my dad coming here. I'm stunned she still loves Hervil. And it's not just me who was shocked to hear this, So is Adrian. Herville was the man who ordered his father dead. I look across at Adrian and I see that he's crying. Adrian, there are something she said that seemed to make you kind of emotional. What was that or why did it make you emotional? The way she the way she feels, that makes me feel, just because it's sad to see this story. Guy, he's got me emotional.

Same match it to me. Let's say it's it's a very interesting to me. It's uh, okay, he killed my dad, so he should pay for it. But then, but then if you start thinking who he was for for my dad, and it doesn't matter if he became possess or obsessed with evil spirit, it doesn't change the fact that we lost the beautiful salt because to me, Herbal was a beautiful soul. This is real crucial for me. I'm learning that. And this seems even more incredible. Adrian's dad was murdered

by Irville. In fact, not just his dad, Joel was also his prophet. But somehow Adrian has similar feelings towards Irvil as Delhi. This is one of the more remarkable and I gotta say challenging things about Hervial, the love and loyalty he was able to extract from people no matter what he did. And as I'm standing there on that hill overlooking the town of Los Milinos, I wonder was that how he was able to get away with manipulating people to kill in his name, Because there is

no denying the whole evil had over certain people. Even after the attack on those Milinos you could say he was only really just getting started. He was headed from Delhi from Joe Castillo, Joe Aguilar, Julia Cardoba. But Erville would continue to be chased and hunted by people like Larive Stops and others in colonial LeBaron as he continued

his restless wandering through the darkness. Rville was headed to America to expand his cult to new followers, and there he would find more disciples willing to shed more blood in his name. They were going to go out and save the world. Was the leader. When they all got on this ship to go out and save the world. And as they went along, I started thinking started dragon and things weren't good, and then it caught on fire.

That's coming up in episode three. 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, free Key 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 Makaluso, or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the team. A U T A. For more from novel, visit novel dot Audio